Hi Reader,

The service I use for scheduling calls, Calendly, launched a brand refresh this week and I wanted to share some thoughts on it in todays dispatch.

Having been through a brand refresh at ConvertKit several years ago I know that even when you’ve hired an agency to create the new visual brand, this project is still a lot of work for the internal team. So many assets to update, changes to communicate, and the knowledge that you’ll probably still be catching old versions of the logo in use a year later! Not to mention learning to work within the new design style yourself.

Let’s dive in and take a look at this new brand and how it has been applied to their marketing site.

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A brand new identity for Calendly

Calendly worked with Pentagram on the design of their new visual identity. Design partner Eddie Opara describes it as “a combination of modernist typography with geometric touches”.

The logomark is a “visual metaphor for finding overlaps in schedules and capturing opportunities” and there’s a whole system surrounding it with different shapes inside the C.

Personally I've always felt these kinds of flexible identities are great for telling a story around the rebrand at launch, but are rarely used in practice. As time goes on the team sticks to one version of the logo and it works just fine. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with Calendly.

Overall, this brand feels very ‘of the moment’ with the modernist typography and the somewhat-clashing colors & patterns. It’s on-trend and to me it feels heavily influenced by streetwear culture, but it’s also refined enough to not go out of fashion too quickly. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen it before (especially the patterns and shapes as applied on their marketing site), but perhaps that’s just because of the trend influences.

As a customer of Calendly I like it, but it does feel like a very different brand compared to what they had previously. The light and minimal design style Calendly used previously had it placed in my mind as simply a utility. I feel like I’m starting to see Calendly the brand rather than just Calendly the product now that I’ve seen this redesign.

Calendly marketing site - New vs old

Let's take a look at how this brand has been applied to the Calendly website (well, just the homepage, because I know you don't have all day to read this newsletter!)

The header section greets us with bold typograhy incorporating their new brand line "easy ahead" and while I appreciated the simple explanatory heading on the previous version of their site (which you can see below), this new introduction does make me feel like it can solve more than just that one problem. I love the product animation too. It demonstrates how Calendly works, as well as being a fun visual element to showcase some of the new brand shapes.

The new navigation they have at the top of the page is strong, because without even clicking anything or scrolling further I can see that this is a product for individuals, teams and enterprise companies. This seems like a positioning shift Calendly has taken, as the previous navigation seemed to show the team solution as something separate from the other features. And if I were an enterprise customer I'd definitely assume they didn't have a solution for me.

The "see Calendly in action" heading before their explainer video is much more compelling than the "watch our video" on the previous site, and bringing in the logos of large companies shows me that teams are definitely more of a focus for Calendly now.

The rest of the page features strong, attention-grabbing headings that tell you a story without having to read all the details (my favorite approach to constructing a marketing landing page). And they show pieces of the app so you're getting a sense of how the product works. By contrast, the old site made the product seem much less robust due to the (much) smaller type, simpler language, and illustration approach.

I will say that I don't quite understand why these two animations featured here on the new site needed to be carousels (just the image changes, not the text). But other than that I really like the product overview on the new site.

Just before the main CTA section on the new site we see a testimonial quote from someone about how their sales team is using Calendly, with a link to the teams page. That's the second occurrence of a link to learn more about how teams use Calendly on the homepage so it's clearly the secondary CTA. I think this testimonial could be made stronger by featuring a photo of Dave himself (that's not him, I googled him to check who he was and how he identified), and by including his title. It's great point on the page for some social proof though.

The previous website included social proof right before the main CTA too. Given the simplicity of the rest of the old site, you might be surprised to see such a large number of users when you reach this point on the page. I like that in the new site they moved the logos of customers up to nearer the top of the page. I think 'trusted by' logos work well to establish credibility quickly and could be the reason that someone interested in their teams solution continues scrolling the page.

The bottom CTA is so much stronger on the new site. Super large type and a very clear explanation of what happens when you sign up to dispel any fears around clicking that signup button and what it might lock you in to. The button itself is really fun. I love when designers find ways to make such a common and quite frankly boring element normally into something with more personality (while retaining functionality). Buttons don’t have to be rectangles! There’s a nice animation on it too.

The previous site in contrast ended with a very simple CTA.

This site update clearly positions them as a valuable solution for teams, as well as individuals, through subtle shifts in language, the demo content they chose, and the social proof they included. I expect Calendly will see their conversion rate go up with the new site, and I'd love to have a representative on the next season of Inside Marketing Design to give us more details (if anyone from Calendly happens to be reading this: hi! please email me).

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I love taking a close look at marketing websites, and I hope you enjoyed this analysis. Please reply and let me know if you did! I want to ensure these emails are adding value to your inbox, rather than just noise.

I’m heading away tomorrow for a little vacation, so I’m going to stop thinking about marketing design for the rest of the week. I’m excited to be somewhere other than my own apartment for once!

Hope your week is a good one.

Happy designing,

Charli