Blog Rebranding Process

My blog rebranding took some time to process. I’ve actually been thinking about it for at least 9 months.

Rebranding of any kind is not something that I would undertake without serious consideration. Any time you change something in your online presence, it shouldn’t be taken lightly. So I had a lot to consider before doing anything publicly.

Previously, It’s OK to be WEIRD has undergone 2 design changes.

It’s OK to be WEIRD! Design #1

My FIRST blog design looked like this:

Flowers and Sunshine, with the crazy little stick figure girl.

A good mix of colour, many similar colours to what I had most recently on the site. It was a little quirky, and very original at the time. It had some big bold headers with a nice mix of fonts/texts.

The Logo or Profile Pic for this blog looked like this:

That little stick girl is really cute. The font for “WEIRD” was a fun scrolly kind of writing, too, different from the rest.

It’s OK to be WEIRD! Design #2 – 1st blog rebranding

When I moved from my original non-standard blogging platform to Blogger, I went through a blog rebranding (mostly because my very first blog design wasn’t at all compatible with any other platform). I kept the same basic design when I transferred to WordPress.

So, most recently, my blog looked like this:

Things I loved about this theme:

BRIGHT blue sky with sunshine.
Sunshine icons everywhere
Fun bright colour combination – light blue with gold, plus red and bright blue accents
Fun details
Cleaner, more professional than the first blog

For a profile photo or smaller logo space, I created and used this image:

plus the favicon.

I LOVED this branding, but it didn’t fit the blog theme – WEIRD!

New Blog Branding Ideas

For the NEW Branding, I was looking for:

BRIGHT COLOURS
- keeping the light blue and gold was something I seriously considered, to maintain some brand consistency even while making changes).
UNIQUE
- it’s gotta be unique, different, weird, right? 🙂
A Character?
- maybe something like the stick figure girl? As simple as a SMILIE face sunshine or something…

I kind of kept coming back to the idea of a SILLY FLOWER.

Flowers have always been part of my life and could fit well with the theme. I have 2 bendy flowers in my office – yellow and blue – and they inspired me.

This is the kind of information I gave to Eva (pretty_face) over at Fiverr to begin with my new logo design process.

It’s OK to be WEIRD! Design #3

Eva worked with me to come up with just want I wanted.

First version:

CUTE! Excellent start on the concept.

2nd version:

CUTER! Brighter! Better!

Final version:

CUTEST!! Perfect! Fantastic!

Very representative of my theme, don’t you think?

I’ve tweaked the fonts a bit, but the flower is still the same.

I wasn’t sure how a Fiverr logo design would work out, but I’m really pleased.

The design elements that we incorporated really do reflect all the things I was hoping for my brand to represent.

Going with a new logo has allowed me to implement a new look without totally having to redo all the rest of my colours, as well as alleviating the need to rework the overall blog design. Changing out a few images is all that is needed at this time. It’s like a whole new-to-me blog, but without quite as much work as a totally new site design!

I feel that this unique flower girlie is a great addition to my brand and to the site. She’ll be showing up on all kinds of landscapes and backgrounds.