Hey Reader,

Did you see that Zapier rebranded? If you didn’t; don’t worry, I gotchu. I want to share a few thoughts on their new brand and its application to their homepage. I’m also sharing some details on a few projects I have underway! So let’s get into it.

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A new brand for Zapier

Zapier is a no-code automation tool that I’ve used for many years (it’s what automatically brings in my new YouTube videos and Dribbble shots to my homepage!)

With their new logo, they’ve ditched the techy ‘cog’ as their brand mark and instead have a simple horizontal rectangle acting as a platform.

The space above it is intentional empty to represent the flexibility of the platform for you to bring your own ideas to life. The uses I’ve seen so far fill in the space with animated illustrations that represent how users have said Zapier makes them feel, photos of their customers, and to underline key words.

I’m surprised that so far there’s no use of this motif on the homepage, but that may still come as the Zapier team actually shipped the new homepage back in April (albeit with different fonts it seems), despite the new brand only being launched a few weeks ago. Love to see a staggered release, it’s what we’ve been doing as we revamp our brand at ConvertKit too.

It’s very clear that the main goal of the rebrand is to make automation feel approachable. Getting rid of the cog brandmark — a shape that conjures imagery of complex machinery and grinding away — was a smart first step, but the fonts they’ve chosen, especially the italic GT Alpina are also very approachable and not at all ‘techy’ in their application. They look cool. A little too on-trend perhaps? But I think they’ll go a long way in breaking the misconception that automation is highly technical.

Of course fonts and a logo can only do so much of the heavy lifting, and Zapier have really embraced social proof on their homepage to get the ‘automation is for everyone’ message across. From the clear name and title under the image in the hero section I shared earlier to this floating wall of tweets from people (not companies… individual people) you are left feeling like this isn’t something only fancy engineering folks can do.

The focus on individuals rather than companies is an interesting one as it seems in the SaaS world many of the products I use are starting to lean in to an enterprise or ‘teams’ focus (looking at you in particular, Notion). I’ll be paying close attention to how Zapier handles this balance, but right now it seems like they’re going all in on showing individuals within teams that they can get value from automation.

Congrats on the rebrand, Zapier! This work feels fresh, considered, and is beautiful to look at.

What do you think though? Are you a fan of this direction? Feel free to reply and let me know!

​Check out the rebrand in more detail here​

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Redesigning my personal website

Look, can we just all agree that a personal website is never “finished” and so maybe it’s not that I’m redoing it once again, but that it’s just time for its next evolution!

My current homepage was designed to showcase my latest content. I swapped out the profile photo in the hero section to be an image promoting my font when I launched that over a year ago, but overall the page is not optimised for directing folks to the products and services I now offer. It doesn’t even mention this newsletter!

The time and space of this sabbatical got me inspired to start reworking it into a home for all my various projects. I’m periodically livestreaming the design and build process so turn on notifications on my YouTube channel if you’d like to follow along (or watch the first replay below). But I’ll also be making some shorter videos to add to my Designing & building my personal website playlist that’s been ongoing since 2018 😅

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The Inside Marketing Design podcast is coming back!

I’ve started the groundwork for season 3 of Inside Marketing Design, and aiming to have the first episode live in September! I’ve already got some excited tech companies lined up, and the wonderful folks at Webflow have once again signed on as my season sponsor. I’m so grateful for their support of the show!

This season will cover the usual nerdy details of team structure and design processes as past seasons have, but I’m also putting special focus on learning how teams iterate and improve on existing assets. How do they know when it’s time for a new version? What metrics do they look at to tell them what’s working on the current version? And how do they balance the improvements with the constant stream of new work that’s coming in?

I’m excited about it, and I hope you are too! In the meantime, check out episodes from all these great companies and many more in the current catalogue.

Go behind-the-scenes

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Just one week of sabbatical left for me 🥲 I’ve loved this time off and wish it could be longer! I’ll be making the most of week-day beach trips and afternoon siestas in this final week as well as continuing work on my personal site when the mood strikes.

Hope you have a good week!

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