Rebrand roundup: are Mozilla, PayPal, and Figma’s recent rebrands any good?

Refreshing your branding can be a great way to stand out in a crowded marketplace and show customers that you’re willing to evolve and engage.

However, there can sometimes be a disconnect between what you want to showcase as a business and what prospective customers think.

Case in point: Gap’s logo redesign, which lasted all of six days before the leadership team realized they’d taken a massive misstep.

We’ve been watching three recent tech rebrands with interest – Mozilla, PayPal, and Figma. Join us as we cast a designer’s eye over the new look & feels.

Mozilla rebrand: reclaiming the internet

Retro branding is on trend right now. Think Burger King, which recently returned to the logo it originally had in the late sixties, alongside nostalgic, warm colors and seventies-inspired typography.

Mozilla has similarly taken an old-school approach, replacing the red dinosaur with a quirky, 8-bit Tyrannosaurus Rex and an edict to “reclaim the internet”.

The mastermind behind the Mozilla rebrand is Lisa Smith, who interestingly, was behind the Burger King rebrand. The goal was to create a new brand to connect with both new and existing users and show them where Mozilla was heading in the future.

It was vital for Mozilla to showcase its personality and make it stand out from other tech companies. For example, while it employs sans-serif and slab-serif typefaces, it draws inspiration from pixel patterns to differentiate from other brands and add a touch of retro, vintage charm to its modern tech.

Our thoughts on the Mozilla rebrand

We really love this rebrand. It’s an exciting callback to the DIY, activist ethos the internet had in the early aughts. It works on multiple levels too – the new dinosaur logo also doubles as a flag, acting as a rallying call to action.

Compared to Google’s slick, polished, slightly bland branding, it makes Mozilla stand out and appeal to a completely different audience.

However, it’s fair to say that the rebrand has divided the internet – with some people loving it and others scratching their heads. To be fair, the dinosaur logo works best as an animation rather than a static image.

Figma rebrand: where design is everyone’s business

A valid reason why companies rebrand is because they have a new target audience. 

Take “Dunkin’ Donuts”, which rebranded to “Dunkin’” to appeal to customers who were interested in more than just fried pastries.

Before 2024, Figma was a platform that designers used to create prototypes. However, the product has evolved to become more of a collaboration platform where team members (and not just designers) can get together to share thoughts and co-create.

As a result, Figma has moved away from its old branding to something more abstract and colorful, showcasing the brand as a virtual playground where people can come together to create amazing things. 

Unlike the other brand refreshes on this list, which were carried out by design agencies, the Figma rebrand took place in-house.

Bright and playful, Figma wanted a brand identity that appealed to users, could scale with the business, and could be interpreted in multiple ways. As Brand Studio Director Damien Correll put it: “A developer might look at something as simple as a rectangle one way, through inspection mode, while a designer may see it from an alternate perspective.”

Figma has even developed its own typeface in collaboration with Grilli Type called Figma Sans. An expert, reliable counterpart to Figma’s big bouncy nodes, boisterous shapes, and bold shades.

Our thoughts on the Figma rebrand

This is more of a refresh than a rebrand — think of it more as an evolution than a large departure. It’s still recognizable, but a lot more dynamic and abstract than it was before.

One thing that we found interesting about the Figma branding was the removal of the static cursors that used to represent the brand, especially since Figma pioneered the multiplayer cursor in the first place. As more and more companies use cursors as part of their brand identity, it could be a savvy move for Figma to step away. 

As Correll said: “It’s a really important part of our history, (but) we don’t want to be stuck in the cursor zone.”

From a design perspective, we love the use of colors and free-flowing shapes. It’s a smart way to make Figma appealing to more people, without abandoning its initial demographic. 

PayPal rebrand: branding for everyone, everywhere

PayPal only rebranded in 2022, so the design world was surprised when the payment provider announced it was rebranding yet again.

This time around, the platform moved away from the iconic double-P logo to something flatter and more basic. 

There’s a strong corporate trend of flattening logos – take Google, Johnson & Johnson, GoDaddy, BMW, ABC, et al. The advantage of this is that it makes logos easier to work with, but the significant disadvantage is that it can make a brand much more forgettable.

The PayPal rebrand was spearheaded by Pentagram, one of the largest design agencies in the world and the brains behind brands including Citibank, American Girl, and Porsche.

Ease-of-use appears to be the overlying watchword here, reflecting how easy PayPal is to send and receive payment on. 

The logo is crisper, and a new bespoke typeface is now in place – a customized version of LL Supreme. 

The color palette has also been streamlined to white, black, and an assortment of blue tones. The original yellow has been quietly discontinued, possibly to bring PayPal in line with other online banking platforms.

Our thoughts on the PayPal rebrand

Hmm, we’re not sure if we’re fans of this one. 

We understand that banks and financial institutions want to feel like a safe pair of hands and reassure their customers. However, it’s possible to have a brand identity that is fun, unique, and reliable at the same time – UK bank Monzo does this really well.

That being said, we do like the idea of PayPal’s rebrand being based around user actions like tapping, flipping, and swiping – it makes the brand feel dynamic and relatable.

If you like’d this piece, check out some of our previous rebrand roundups from 2023 and 2022. We’ll be regularly reviewing rebrands on this blog. Why not sign up to our mailing list to discover our latest reviews?

The Power of Visual Design and How It Tells People a Hidden Story

Visual design as language – why it's more than just looking pretty

When it comes to visuals, we're hard-wired to gravitate towards what looks most appealing. The most attractive color combination, the most aesthetically pleasing logo, the most stunning photography.

However, that's not the whole story. The best visual design doesn't just look good but has additional layers – communicating a narrative through imagery to your audience and prospective customers.

Every color choice, typography decision, photographic subject or layout structure needs to be the result of a careful, considered process.

Let's look at how you can use graphic design elements to stand out and make a lasting impression.

Good visual design is easy to understand

Did you know that the brain can completely process an image that the eye only sees for 13 milliseconds? 

This is why colors and iconography are commonly seen on road signs – people can digest and comprehend them as they quickly speed past.

Not only this, but sixty-five percent of the population are visual learners. This means they are more likely to take in and retain information if it's in a visual format. 

The best examples of visual design are the ones that people can quickly understand, even if they’re not fully focused. 

Take street art and murals, which provide people with visual information about a specific area, the history of where they are and what they can expect to see. 

We have a lot of amazing street art in San Francisco, especially in the Mission district, where our agency is based. It’s home to many murals from the Chicano Art Mural Movement of the 1970s, organizations like the Clarion Alley Mural Project and Precita Eyes Muralists, and icons like Carlos Santana and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. 

Intentional visual design makes you more memorable

When you have a lot of competitors, you need to stand out from the crowd. Often, your visual identity can make the difference between people remembering your brand and opting to buy from your nearest rival.

Good visual design tells a story, and as the old saying goes, a picture says a thousand words.

Take colors for example – the right choices can make people remember an image even if they can't remember anything else. A study showed that 78% of participants could recall the primary color of a logo, while only 43% could remember the name of a business.

A fantastic example of color and memorability in visual design is Charli XCX’s “Brat” cover, which turned the internet slime green. A survey by YouGov shows that 14% of people have heard of the term “Brat Girl Summer”, even if they’re not sure what it means.

Story-telling and great design were at the heart of our work for Casa Hechizos. Each product is associated with an orisha with its own color and symbols, depicting knowledge, and most importantly, authenticity.

Visual design elements provide universal understanding

Imagine you're going on holiday, and you land at the airport of your chosen destination. How do you find the bathroom, passport control, or baggage reclaim, even if you don't speak the language?

Through icons. Good visual design speaks to people, even if they don't understand what's said. 

Visual design like this isn't just a trend – it's been going on for centuries. In nature, animals use color to tell humans and predators to stay back. Bright colors like red, yellow, and orange, as well as bold patterns, are warning signs that an animal is poisonous and that predators should keep their distance.

Let’s extend this to the modern world. “Sale” posters and signs are usually red. This is to create a sense of urgency and excitement, encouraging people to impulse buy. Meanwhile, healthcare websites, like the one we created for Vantis, are more likely to be a calming color like blue or green.

Of course there are some cultural exceptions that you need to bear in mind if you want to sell to an international audience. However for the most part, visual design transcends language.

Solid visual design helps people read between the lines

Sometimes you can't say everything you want to say about your company on a landing page or advert in a magazine. In this situation, your imagery can subconsciously tell people more about your business.

For example, the type styling can often tell you more than the text itself. For example, Coca-Cola's elaborate logo evokes nostalgia and good feelings. Citibank's sturdy typography suggests trustworthiness and stability. The backwards font on this Kooples t-shirt indicates individuality and rebellion. 

Some brands even include nifty easter eggs in their logos to reiterate what they do. Take FedEx, which has a hidden arrow in between the "E" and the "X" – now you know about it, you'll never not be able to see it! 

The power of graphic design elements

Your visuals should never be an afterthought

Before you open your laptop to design a poster, website, or book cover, it’s essential to understand what you want to say and how you can use imagery to illustrate your point.

When you've got that down, you're one step closer to connecting with your audience in a more emotive and personal way.

Need help telling your story through well-crafted imagery? We specialize in visual design that tells people all about you. Reach out to learn more.

Breaking Down the 'Brat' Album Cover Design

Brat album cover: Missed opportunity or anti-design masterpiece?

It’s not every day that an artist releases a record whose artwork gets imitated by the Sims, Gucci, and the UK’s Green Party.

But that’s precisely what happened when Charli XCX released her sixth album, “Brat” in June. Even if you’ve got no idea who Charli XCX is, you might recognize the slime green color, distorted font, and minimalist design.

Her fans were upset when the album was released – unlike her previous albums, she wasn’t featured on the cover. 

(Charli XCX responded by saying the demand for women to be seen on album artwork was “misogynistic and boring.”) 

From a design perspective, we find the discourse around the album fascinating. While Charli XCX isn’t the first artist to go down the minimal album cover route, it’s interesting to see so many people take the artwork to heart.

But what makes the Brat album cover so good? Let’s break it down.

The color

You know your branding is on point when your customers can recognize you from one color alone. Think the robin’s egg blue of Tiffany & Co, the Hermès orange, or the Millennial pink of Glossier.

It took these brands years, even decades, to reach that stage, but Charli XCX achieved it with one album cover. Pantone would’ve been smart to make it the 2024 Color of the Year.

Okay, the Brat color (#8BCF00 if you’re interested) isn’t one that everyone wants to claim. It’s grungy, grotesque and looks slightly biohazardous. It reminds us of the slime they used on Nickelodeon, or the top of a Maybelline Great Lash Mascara, or Chumbawamba’s album ‘Tubthumper’ from 2006.

Charli XCX said this was intentional… “I wanted to go with an offensive off-trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong.”

Brent David Freaney of Special Offer (the creative studio that designed the cover) followed this up with “Charli had a very clear idea of what she wanted from the jump… we went through hundreds of pairings of type and color and … ultimately chose a green that felt very off-trend. Something that didn’t ooze ‘taste’.”

Discomfort has always been a tool in modern art and design – it evokes emotion and encourages people to think beyond the standard norms. Think of Marina Abramovic, who encouraged audience members to use items on her, from feathers to knives.

The best art is always divisive – if everyone likes it, is it really art?

The typeface

Low-res, blurred, and distorted, the Brat type doesn’t seem to be an exercise in skilled, precise typography. However, like the puke green color of the album cover, appearances can be deceptive.

Special Offer has gone on record to say that the font on the Brat cover is a customized version of ABC Rom designed by Dinamo. However, they also used Arial in some instances, for example, in stage graphics.

According to the blurb:  ABC Rom “combines the rationalized lines of (Grotesk typeface styles) with raw details from (Gothic typeface styles), resulting in moments both beautiful and dissonant.”

Beautiful and dissonant – two extremes combined in one font. The right typography for an album cover created to inspire debate.

(By the way, if you want to create your own wording in the Brat style, this website has you covered.)

Anti-branding and how it’s making a comeback

We talked about “anti-branding” being a major design trend all the way back in 2023, and we’re pleased to mark it off our bingo card!

Anti-branding is all about understanding the rules and throwing them out the window. When you know what works, you can get experimental with colors, shapes, and typography.

As legendary director John Waters once said: “To understand bad taste, one must have very good taste.”

Another thing to remember is that art is cyclical – past trends reemerge and disappear. Charli XCX’s cover art is reminiscent of the artwork of the late 90s. Textured, raw, disruptive.

The thing we like most about the Brat cover? It’s authentic. From the interviews surrounding the cover art, it’s evident that Charli XCX wants to step back from the fakery of the music scene and present a more genuine image.

In her own words: “I’d like for us to question our expectations of pop culture. Why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad?”

Over to you – what do you think of the Brat album cover? Stroke of genius, or do you prefer your album covers to be more traditional?

A roundup of our favorite brat memes

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

Happy Birthday to Us! Celebrating Five Years of Building Brands

Pop the champagne and bring in the cake… did you know we are celebrating a milestone birthday this year?

Yes, Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is five years old (although we don’t look a day over four!)

It’s been a wild five years as a branding and design agency, working with fantastic clients, building a presence across San Francisco, and navigating the pros and cons of running a business. 

Join us as we look back at what we achieved, how we got started, and some of the amazing businesses we’ve helped along the way.

2019: Ads and bags

“I worked as an in-house designer in the past, and I knew the ultimate goal was to run my own design agency. I wanted to work with meaningful brands and women-owned businesses aligned with my values,” says Anastasia Salazar. “It was just a case of taking that leap.”

Before launching her agency, Anastasia took a job as Creative Director of Google Play Retail & Payments. “I networked as much as I could outside of office hours – I wanted to get the word out an share how I could help.”

Anastasia quit her job in June and started to get to work. “I joined a coworking space, applied for a business license, and before I knew it, we had our first client.”

The client in question? Udemy, a San Francisco-based online learning marketplace. “We created a Black Friday ad campaign for the brand, encouraging people to invest in their personal and professional skills. So many brands use black for Black Friday, so we used bright colors to make Udemy stand out.”

2019 finished on a high, art-directing a photoshoot in LA and designing a custom bag. “After working on websites and ads, it was fun to create something tangible – everyone loves a bit of swag!”  

2020: Oh my blog

2019 was the year Anastasia Salazar Ltd hit the ground. 2020 was the year we started to run. We hired our first two employees – Emily Moore and Andreina Prado.

We hosted San Francisco Design Week, presenting a session called “Building an Agency from the Ground Up.” Not bad going after celebrating our first anniversary!

We also celebrated our first testimonial and launched our design blog, where we show off our expertise. 

2020 was another year of firsts… in the form of a virus called COVID-19.

“Interestingly, the pandemic didn’t affect our business or how we worked too much,” says Anastasia. “If anything, branding became even more important to businesses as companies were pivoting and a whole new pandemic economy emerged.”

Finally, we started the tradition of our Holiday Card, something to send out to clients and local businesses to wish them a happy holiday and thank them. From posters to GIFs, we always try to do something different and a little bit quirky each and every year!

2021: Building brands, winning fans

“One thing we noticed in our first two years of business was that smaller companies seemed reluctant to get their branding in check,” says Anastasia. “They thought branding was something only big companies like Nike and Apple needed. We wanted to make branding and design accessible to everyone.”

As a result, we launched the Brand Builder Package. For a set rate, clients could get a custom logo, brand identity, and messaging, as well as their choice of deliverables. Simple, effective, and streamlined. 

One of the first companies to sign up for our Brand Builder Package was Casa Hechizos, a business specializing in spiritual wellness. Just starting out, we helped them shape their brand identity, packaging, and web design. 

After the project, we got an unexpected surprise on social media. “We were absolutely stunned to see artists like Kehlani, SZA, Summer Walker and Jay Versace raving about Casa Hechizos on Instagram,” says Anastasia. “It’s unexpected, but so cool, to see artists that you’re a massive fan of holding a product you designed.”  

Add a feature in Abduzeedo, and 2021 was a roller-coaster of a year!

2022: Hallo Deutschland

In 2022, the world started to open up, and we got back to doing in-person events around the San Francisco area. It was nice to get out and speak to people in real time again!

Speaking of opening borders, we got our first international client in the form of Vantis Health, a Munich-based digital health solutions company. While we may not understand German, the language of good design is definitely universal!

We made 2022 the year we got organized. “When we originally put our working processes in place, it was 2019, and we were much smaller,” says Anastasia. “With more clients and staff, we needed to up our game.”

Not only did we streamline our workflows, but we also created an online client and team portal. That way, we could discuss projects and timescales, and share our work with clients – ensuring everyone was always in the loop.

Finally, we launched the next iteration of our Brand Builder Package. 

“Some smaller businesses aren’t in a position to work with an agency but still want to invest in their branding,” says Anastasia. “So we developed the Brand Builder Workshop to help companies nail their messaging. We not only presented the workshop to companies in the area but made it available online as a virtual course the year after.” 

2023: The year we went viral

We did a lot of housekeeping in 2023. We moved workspaces, launched our Brand Builder Course, and started our monthly newsletter.

However, we also had a mystery to solve. 

“We suddenly experienced a random bump in website visits,” says Anastasia, “and we wanted to find out why. We did some digging, and it turns out that a Japanese blog shared the anniversary images we created for Twitter back in 2017. This led to a lot, and I mean a lot, of referral traffic!”

2024: A “clutch” of awards

While we may only be halfway through 2024, we’ve been keeping busy!

At the start of the year, we took on our first not-for-profit client. The CUNY Intergenerational Change Initiative is a fantastic organization that advocates for young people, and we loved helping them redesign their website.

It’s always fantastic to receive acknowledgement for the hard work you do. This year, Clutch named us “Top Graphic Design Company in San Francisco” and “Top Logo Design Company in San Francisco,” while Manifest named us “Most Reviewed Graphic Design Company in San Francisco.”

“These awards are so special to us as they are given based on the quality of work and positive client reviews,” says Anastasia. “They show that we’re passionate about branding and design and that our clients get results from the work we do for them.”

And finally, we published our Brand Builder Course on Udemy. Given that Udemy was our first client, it felt right that we came full circle!

What does the future bring?

So, what are our plans for the rest of 2024 and the years ahead?

“Following the success of the online Brand Builder Course, we want to branch out into other products” says Anastasia. “We plan to create templates for people to buy online, so they can design stunning websites and digital collateral that represent their brands, as well as drive conversions.”

“We’re also planning to redevelop our website and brand in the not-too-distant future, so watch this space!”

Here’s to the next five years… and beyond!

Our first five years in business haven’t always been easy. There have been invoices to chase, quiet periods of work to manage and massive pitches to work on.

However, it’s been fantastic working with value-aligned clients, helping women-owned businesses to flourish, and watching our team evolve and grow.

We’re grateful to all our clients for putting their faith in us. It’s wonderful to see them own their brands and hear their success stories. For example, Dr. Aditi launching her own book, and Sisu, one of our first clients, getting acquired by Snowflake.   

Also, a big thank you to our incredible team of contributors, past and present, who made it all possible — Grace, Mariel, Marielle, India, Andreina, Juhee, Cheawon, Clara, and Kate.

(It’s starting to feel a bit like the Academy Awards, isn’t it? Don’t worry, we’ll stop now!)

Looking for a branding agency in San Francisco? We’d love to include you in our timeline moving forward! Reach out, and let’s see how we can grow your business with stunning design and branding.

Navigating Mental Health Branding – 5 Key Elements for Credibility and Trust

Developing the perfect branding for your company requires a lot of thought. You need to consider your target audience, and the impression you want to convey and give potential customers a reason to trust you.

Creating the perfect branding for a mental health or wellness business is even more challenging. There’s a lot of sensitivity and stigma around these topics, and you don’t want to say or do anything that could trigger your customers.

To commemorate Mental Health Awareness Month, we’ve compiled five things to be aware of when designing mental health branding projects. We’ll explain why branding matters and show you some examples of our work for wellness and mental health organizations.

1. Education

People will have a lot of questions about your products and services before they commit. 

What support do you offer? Is confidentiality assured? Are the feelings and emotions I’m experiencing normal?

In this situation, you must provide clear information to help potential customers make an informed decision.

We helped Casa Hechizos develop a detailed and clear resource section for its website, with colorful photos and step-by-step guides to make the content as easy to digest as possible.

Think about the questions people may ask and how you can answer them. Look at the emails, live chats, and social media messages customers send, and use this to build a reliable library of resources.

2. Clarity

User experience (UX) is essential across all websites. UX concerns how visitors interact with your site and find what they need. 

Nearly 90% of visitors will leave your website and not come back if they have a bad experience.

UX is especially important in the wellness and mental health sector. Visitors might access your site from a mobile phone to avoid others knowing. They may need to find information quickly. They may be in need of emotional support, which can affect how they browse or their attention span.

Good UX empowers visitors, increasing the chances of them sticking around and converting.

When we redesigned Vantis’s website, we wanted to create a site that was accessible and patient-centric. Large type sizes, negative space, and animated arrows made it easy for their target audience of older patients to navigate the site and find what they needed.

3. Trust

When you offer wellness and mental health support, the relationship between you and your customers is a highly personal and a vulnerable one. You need to give them a good reason to put their trust in you.

Nearly 90% of businesses think customers have a high level of trust in them. However the reality is that only 30% of customers do.

How can you encourage trust and confidence through your wellness branding? Through trust signals. Trust signals are pieces of content like reviews, awards, accreditations, and memberships. These show prospective customers that you’re a credible and reliable choice.

When creating the branding for Dr. Aditi, establishing trust was a vital part of the process. We did this through high-quality testimonials, book reviews from well-known sources, and mentions in the mainstream media.

Authenticity is also crucial for building trust. Work with brands that share your values, be consistent, and don’t be afraid to show your human side, like in this Instagram post from Dr. Aditi.

4. Warmth

One in five US adults lives with a mental illness. If you or a loved one faces a diagnosis, it can be a scary and frustrating time. You may not know where to turn.

This means it’s vital to ensure your mental health branding is warm, inclusive, and approachable to encourage people to reach out for the help they need.

Does this mean your wellness brand can’t be refined or avant-garde? Of course not — you can convey friendliness through the colors, patterns, even the photos you use.

We used natural, earthy textures on the Embodied Truth Healing website to evoke a sense of calm and encourage visitors to learn more.

5. Support

Mental health doesn’t have to be cold, stuffy, or something to be embarrassed about. The more we can do to overcome the stigma and encourage others to talk about it, the better.

Everyone has a part to play. 

We love this internal campaign our team designed for Facebook. It included colorful wall murals to raise awareness, stickers for employees to put on their laptops, and an online portal to share stories. 

It meant employees could build a strong community, support one another, and encourage people to get the help they needed.

We hope you found this look at mental health awareness ideas valuable. Remember that approachability and trust are critical. You need to demonstrate that you can provide a safe space and that it’s okay not to be okay.

If you’re looking for branding services for your mental health and wellness company or organization, get in touch with us, we’d love to hear from you!

Please remember – if you are struggling, you’re not alone. The 988 Lifeline network is available 24/7 across the US if you need to talk to someone.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. Named as a Game-Changing Web Designer and Most-Reviewed Graphic Design Agency

Many companies continue to fall behind their competitors due to the lack of proper knowledge when it comes to branding and design. One of the best solution for this is by partnering with a professional and experienced design agency! Thankfully, our team at Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is here to help you with your design needs.

Our San Francisco-based independent design firm specializes in custom branding and digital design for businesses in the retail, tech, and wellness industries. Together with your team, we identify the distinctive qualities of your company, such as your goals, beliefs, and personality. Then, we translate those qualities into compelling imagery and real messaging that appeals to both the audience of today and tomorrow.

We genuinely love beautiful imagery, thoughtfully constructed copy, and astute strategy. This is reflected in marketing campaigns, site design, brand identities, and brand messaging. As a matter of fact, our efforts in the industry have been recently recognized by Clutch and The Manifest! Clutch named us as one of the game-changing web designers in California and the Manifest named us as one of the most-reviewed Graphic Design Agencies in San Francisco. We are proud to be recognized for our contributions and passion in the industry.

Clutch, for those who don’t know, is a B2B ratings and reviews platform based in Washington, DC. They evaluate agencies based on the quality of work, thought leadership, and client reviews. Clutch has become the go-to resource in the agency space. 

The Manifest, a sister company to Clutch, has a B2B research directory that aims to gather and verify the hard data, expert insights, and actionable advice.

Our team would like to express our appreciation to The Manifest, Clutch and our clients for making this award a reality. Thank you for trusting us and for supporting our business throughout the years! 

We would like to celebrate this recognition by looking back at our favorite reviews, here are some of them:

“As an NYC non-profit youth-centered program focused on civic engagement, having an up-to-date, vibrant, and accessible website is paramount to engaging diverse stakeholders. We launched our newly designed website last week and thrilled to now include it in all of our forward-facing materials, outreach, and correspondence.” Rachel Castillo,  Program Manager at CUNY Intergenerational Change Initiative

“The outcome was incredible! We received amazing feedback from the community. Within the first three weeks of our launch, we got almost 8 thousand followers on Instagram. Companies have reached out for collaborations, pop-ups, and more. 

Overall, the most meaningful success has been the amount of people who are shifting their perception of our spiritual practice and learning about the important of spiritual wellness.” Ashley Rodriguez, Founder of Casa Hechizos

Ready to start collaborating, or just want to learn more? Reach out to us and we’ll get back to you within 1 business day.

6 Brand Identities You Didn't Know Were Designed by Women

Women's History Month is always a reflective four weeks for us. It's a time to think of the trailblazers in the design industry and all the best brand identities designed by women. It’s scary how little we learn about women in design school and frustrating how women-designed brands aren’t celebrated in the media as much as they should.

Many people (other women included) are surprised to hear that many of the brands they use on a regular basis were designed by women. We've put together a list of some of the trailblazers in the design industry and the brand identities they were responsible for.

Reddit: Natasha Jen

We kick off with a recent rebrand courtesy of the wonderful Natasha Jen – a six-time National Design Award nominee, as well as a speaker, judge, and agency partner.

Reddit wanted to simplify its existing color palette and implement a conversation bubble as the cornerstone of its new visual identity. The goal? To make Reddit an engaging, lively place where users could feel right at home.

Jen simplified Reddit's color palette from over 100 colors to just 15, implementing a new, professional-looking custom typeface. Perfect for a business ready to launch as a publicly traded company.

Reddit's mascot Snoo, also got a makeover. Jen's team wanted to make Snoo as "iconic as Super Mario, " rendering it in 3D and creating a menu of expressive emojis for the platform.

---

Tate: Marina Willer

Good design makes you think. That was the underlying focus of Marina Willer's work when she was called upon to redesign the Tate Gallery's brand identity in 1999.

A Brazilian-born graphic designer based in the UK, Willer is behind prolific brand identities including Rolls Royce and Amnesty International.

The Tate wanted to modernize in time for the millennium, with Willer and her team coming up with the theme "look again, think again." People can perceive the same piece of artwork in a variety of ways, and Willer wanted this concept to shine through in the branding.

A collection of different logos, they all look the same at first glance, but move in and out of focus, providing a dynamic look and feel. Rather than create the logos on a computer, Willer used an analog technique, projecting images on a projector and taking photos.

Willer has gone on record to say that the Tate project was her favorite and how great it was to be a part of the brand's history.

---

ACLU: Sylvia Harris

The ACLU is an organization that campaigns for people's civil liberties and human rights. This means it made perfect sense that when it rebranded, the driving force behind the change was Sylvia Harris. Sylvia Harris was an advocate of social impact design – an approach that uses good design to make a difference in people's lives and create change for the better.  Over the course of her career Harris was involved in the design of hospitals, universities, and civic agencies.

The creative director behind the 2000 census, Harris was approached to rebrand ACLU in 2002. Established in 1920, the organization wanted to modernize, making itself more appealing to young people. The new design featured an iconic depiction of Lady Liberty, coupled with a bold, eye-catching typography.

Harris died unexpectedly in 2011. However, her legacy lives on, and she inspires a generation of women designers who want to drive positive social change through their work. 

---

Nike: Carolyn Davidson

Nine times out of ten, if you ask someone to name a woman-designed brand, they'll say Nike!

Carolyn Davidson was studying graphic design at Portland State University in 1969. It was there that she was asked by Phil Knight, a professor of accounting and future co-founder of Nike, to create a logo for a pair of running shoes he was designing.

The project was not a success, at least not initially. Davidson developed several designs, including the now-iconic "Swoosh," designed to evoke the onomatopoeic sound that an athlete makes as they sprint towards the finish line.

Knight's response? "It's the least worst (logo), but I'll get used to it." However, the logo was registered in 1971, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The urban legend is that Davidson only earned $35 for 17.5 hours of work on a logo that earned the company billions of dollars. While this is true in part, Carolyn did get 500 shares of Nike stock at a later date, valued at $3.6 million in 2023.

---

Warner Bros: Emily Oberman

Emily Oberman was immersed in the design world from a young age, with a painter mother and a graphic designer father. The three of them often collaborated on commercial projects.

Oberman redesigned the famous Warner Bros logo in 2019, which hadn't been touched since 1993 (although it was redesigned again in 2023). A fan of pop culture, Oberman and her team were eager to get started.

A clean and contemporary look was the goal, with Oberman swapping out the dated gold and blue for a sleeker blue and white. The shield was also slimmed down and flattened, making it easier to change out the color scheme and styling for unique projects. 

Oberman isn't just the genius behind the Warner Bros redesign but was the driving force behind a wide range of well-loved brand identities, including Fisher Price, Rotten Tomatoes and Tribeca. 

---

Google: Ruth Kedar

Not many people know that the world's most iconic and well-known brand was woman-designed. 

Ruth Kedar was responsible for the initial Google logo design in 1999, used on the site for over 15 years. Already an established designer and instructor at Stanford, students Larry Page and Sergey Brin reached out to her to create a logo for their brand-new startup.

Kedar wanted to create a logo that was forward-facing but also evoked the past – with a light serif typeface. The bright primary colors were an intentional design choice – showing that like you can create infinite colors with just four, Google can help you discover limitless possibilities. 

Honorable Mentions: More Women-Designed Branding Examples

We've looked at some strong brand identity examples, but there are still a lot of cool brands out there that were designed by women and women-led design studios! 

Here are some of our favorites:

• AliBaba: Illo Studio

• Brooklyn Brewery: Motto

• Genius IQ/BBQ: Tania Lili

• Mailchimp: Jessica Hische

• MTV: Patti Rogoff

Need Something Designed? Ask a Woman-Owned Agency!

Did you know that only one percent of agency owners are women? We've talked about why there are so few women-owned design agencies in a previous article and what we can do collectively to fix things.

At Anastasia Salazar Ltd., we're proud to be women-owned, operated, and staffed. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

5 Best Business Branding Courses in 2024

Branding plays an important role in forming a relationship with a brand’s customers or audience. It’s how you differentiate and build credibility for your brand. But how does it all work? Maybe you’ve even read up on examples of the branding process, and understand it all in theory but you’re curious about understanding the process with a little more depth. 

RELATED: What the Branding Process Really Looks Like

Maybe you’re a business owner, brand strategist, or graphic designer about to jump into the process soon. Before jumping into the extensive branding process, it’s a savvy move to get a little more background to get a better understanding of what branding encompasses, and the components that make it up. This is especially true if you’re planning on hiring professionals to help you along the journey. Starting from a basis of understanding will help move things along more smoothly. Look no further, we’ve compiled a list of 5 of the best branding courses online to help you get started on the right foot.

Brand Builder Course

Price: $35 Duration: 2 hours

The Details:

This course is created for small businesses and entrepreneurs. It provides the groundwork of brand strategy, visual identity, and brand messaging, with a dynamic blend of videos, worksheets, and an option for a consultation add-on.

Pro:
This is the perfect blend of beginner-level basics alongside hands-on resources like worksheets, brand exercises and real-life examples to make branding more concrete.

Con:
If you’ve already created the strategy for your brand and are looking for in-depth instruction on crafting logos or other artwork, this might not be the course for you.

---

A Brand Called You

Price: $99 Duration: 4 hours

The Details:
While the focus is on personal branding for this one, the lessons are still relevant to company branding as well. Finding a meaningful “concept” and discovering ways to stand out are all relevant lessons for company branding too.

Pro:
Provides skills to carry into personal life and how to sell yourself along with professional guidance.

Con:
Doesn’t provide direct advice for company branding.

---

Hyper Island Brand Strategy and Storytelling

Price: $1,590 Duration: 20 hours

The Details:
This course leans towards marketing with lessons on customer behavior and behavioral science. While it gives you a good understanding of brand strategy, it doesn’t teach visual identity or how to execute.

Pros:
This course provides a good framework for storytelling and how to align your internal team.

Cons:
Can be a bit pricey if you already have a basic understanding.

---

Branding Now

Price: £1190 Duration: 10 hours

The Details:
This course provides advanced branding lessons for Creative Directors and Senior Designers including, brand strategy, brand identity and how to guide designers and give feedback.

Pro:
An excellent way to reignite your passion for branding with inspiring case studies.

Con:
Seems to focus more on larger design systems that have a design team in place rather than an approach for startups or small businesses.

---

Branding and Identity: Construction and Development of a Brand

Price: $40 Duration: 2 hours

The Details:
This course takes a corporate identity approach using Saffron (a branding consultancy)’s creative process for visual identity.

Pro:
Uses a hands-on method with a fictitious company as an example.

Con:
By using symbolic language and an artistic approach, the course might not be as accessible to those who are just dipping their toes into branding.

---

Using our list of best branding courses, you can get a roadmap of how to move forward and a deeper understanding of the steps to take. This will save money, time, and pain in the long-run when you start the process of branding. Starting with a big picture of what branding is and familiarizing yourself with some of the concepts and terms will take you far when it comes to creating branding that stands out.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

9+ Pitch Deck Design Tips to Boost Your Pitch

You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. In the case of pitching to investors, this couldn’t be better demonstrated than with pitch deck design. While it would be nice to be the only pitch deck that crosses investors’ desks, the unfortunate truth is that your pitch deck is likely just one of numerous others that they receive every year. Because of this, you only get a few minutes to make the right impression about your product or service. And when you present a stunning, well-organized, and well-thought-out pitch deck to your investor, you’re giving your company the best chance to get noticed and subsequently, thrive.

The Tips

If designing a pitch deck sounds daunting, the good news is that you rarely have to start from zero to create a standout pitch deck. We’ve got a few simple tips to give you a leg up on getting noticed while getting your ideas across clearly.

Image source: Anastasia Salazar Ltd. for YOGO

Leverage Your Existing Branding Work

If you’ve already put in work into branding, this is a great chance to apply that to your pitch deck design. Your existing color palette, typography, photography, or illustrations will all provide a great place to start building a pitch deck that is consistent with your branding. If you haven’t yet established your branding, decide on a color palette of 2-6 colors, 1 typeface style, and establish your margins. 

---

Image source: Anastasia Salazar Ltd. for Auxeris

Stick to a Mood

Along with branding, figure out the mood of your pitch deck design, and stick to it. Think on what you’d like your audience to feel as you move through your presentation. If you want them to feel energized, this might mean action-based images. If you want a sophisticated feel, you might opt for a completely different approach, with lots of negative space and a minimal design. Jumping from one style to another will disorient and detract from your presentation.

---

Image source: Projector

Minimize Text

Unless you’ll be sending your pitch deck with no chance to present directly to the investor, you should do your best to limit the amount of text on your slides. More text means more time spent trying to read everything on the page, rather than paying attention to your message. Try sticking to a maximum of 50 words and voicing over the details.

---

Image source: Anastasia Salazar Ltd. for Akello

Give Bullet Points an Upgrade

For the essential text that is on the page, innovate the way you present the information rather than using the traditional bullet points. Adding icons or images or separating information into more slides can be a good way to break down information logically and creatively.

---

Image source: Anastasia Salazar Ltd. for F8 2018

Don’t Forget Hierarchy

Think about the information you want to bring emphasis to, and make sure there’s some hierarchy to your slides. A good way to do this is to think in terms of an outline format. What is the one most important piece of information you want people to remember from the presentation? What are some supporting features or details?

---

Image source: Projector

Add Emphasis Creatively

One way to visually communicate this hierarchy is to add emphasis creatively. The copy you want to highlight can be emphasized using a different color, size, or weight (bolding). Highlighting the background of the copy, adding icons or photos, frames, or arrows can also be some other simple ways to draw attention to important information and maintain hierarchy.

---

Image source: Creative Market

Use Templates

You don’t have to start from scratch. Turn to websites that offer templates for whatever format you’re using (Keynote, PowerPoint, etc.). For example, try searching “presentation template” on behance.net. If you are creating your own slides, you can make your own templates as well, creating 2-3 variations that you can recycle throughout your presentation and adding consistency.

---

Image source: Projector

Apply Visual Aids

The more visuals, the better. There are many websites that offer free or paid access to icons, illustrations, and photography that can add a little oomph to your presentation, such as The Noun Project, Stocksy or Adobe Stock to name a few. If appropriate, using tools like Giphy can provide a visual aid that adds a bit of light-heartedness as well.

---

Image source: Medium

Making Use of Photography

An easy way to add intrigue to your pitch deck design is through photos. Stock photos can be customized by putting them into various shapes, blurring, or tinting them or using them as a full-bleed background. Photos provide a simple way to bring the presentation to life.

After you’ve put your presentation together, see if all your pages work together. Is there a logical rhythm to the flow, especially with regards to how you’ve distributed images and text?

Opportunities on the Horizon

A pitch deck design that is on-brand and thoughtfully developed will directly affect how the recipient views your company. A well-crafted and memorable pitch deck will likely make a lasting impression, and give you a better chance to really get your message across. And getting your message across means a higher chance of winning over new clients and investors for your business.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you create a presentation customized for your brand.

Rebrand Roundup: 3 Big Recent Company Rebranding Examples

A year has passed since our last Rebrand Roundup, where we discuss the most striking recent company rebranding examples and what we can take away from them.

RELATED: Rebrand Roundup: Inspiration from Company Rebranding Examples

Rebranding is a fine art, requiring a careful balance between the existing brand, and a comprehensive and intentional move into what the brand aspires to be. The results of this delicate process can vary, but we can always learn from them. This year, we’re unraveling the rebrands for X (previously Twitter), HUGO BOSS, and Minute Maid, delving into what went right, and what could have gone better. 

X (Twitter)

It’s almost impossible to talk about rebrands of 2023 without the rebrand that broke the internet. From the whispers and hearsay of Twitter arose the dramatic shift to X with a decidedly Elon Musk-shaped shadow. 

From 2006, Twitter earned a spot in the lexicon of modern internet users, even growing to become the source of new vocabulary such as the verb “to tweet.” However, the friendly, warm, and welcoming blue bird was changed to an exclusive, stark X almost overnight, generating an overwhelming sense of confusion from the general public. According to the brand, the change in name came from the shift in brand strategy, from its role as a social media platform to an “everything” platform meant to encompass a comprehensive ecosystem. But there was no denying that the rollout of this rebrand felt poorly orchestrated and the overall rebrand felt incomplete.

Even with a few announcement measures like the letter "X" projected onto buildings, the general rebrand was shrouded in mystery. With nearly 20 years of branding in the works, the sudden change to X replaced a gentler approach that would have honored the associations that the audience had built toward the brand. 

With a fairly ambiguous connection to Twitter’s brand positioning, the overly simplified logo was more of an homage to Musk’s historical preference for the letter X (a la X.com, SpaceX, X Holdings, etc.) along with dark colors and modern feel. To add, the launch of the new logo before the change in the interface made the rollout felt sloppy and a little undercooked. Without a few necessary ties to the previous brand and a confusing rollout, the poorly executed rebrand resulted in a significant drop in downloads and traffic. 

HUGO BOSS

For the first time since a logo adjustment in the 1990s, HUGO BOSS introduced a complete rebrand that delivered a refreshing new look and feel. From its fading brand presence highly tied to Gen X and Boomer audiences, the brand established a way to connect with a global demographic through its CLAIM 5 growth strategy. 

The brand division into HUGO and BOSS provided a sharper angle for the target audience of each, with HUGO representing an older audience and BOSS for their younger audience. The new look for BOSS held true to the classic colors and muted tones from the brand’s roots, only uplifted with a noticeably bolder logo and visuals. Videos featured fast cuts and interesting camera angles in line with this youthful rebrand.

With its #beyourownboss campaign, the brand leveraged the social relevance of young trendsetters like Future and Kendall Jenner along with engaging social-first content like a podcast, reels, stories, and behind-the-scenes. The contemporary and bold look embraced the messaging geared toward “young, unconventional, and progressive people who live life on their own terms,” according to Daniel Grieder, CEO of HUGO BOSS AG.

With two differentiated audiences and a clear, strategic shift, the brand made big moves to maintain its relevance while sticking to its bread and butter of sharp tailoring and classic styles native to the premium apparel brand.

Minute Maid

The rebranding of Minute Maid came with a hefty list of challenges, including the fact that it has maintained its position as a leading juice brand since 1946, and the fact that it is available in more than 100 countries. But with solid reasoning, a clear concept, and a strategically united front through the packaging, ad campaigns and messaging, the result was a thoughtful and impactful rebrand.

While Minute Maid was badly in need of an update, its worldwide presence also required a flexible design system that would make sense globally while being adaptable locally to consumers in various countries. The rebrand followed in the footsteps of recent globally-unifying refreshes for other Coca-Cola labels, including Fanta, Coca-Cola, and Sprite.

And in keeping with the times, the visuals were executed with an eye for trends including simplified fruit illustrations, table settings with perfectly placed objects, and round, friendly typography. However, the brand was careful not to go too far in the direction of ultra-modern and ground-breaking  as to make the rebrand feel inauthentic. The visual outcome was so successful because in the end, the look was still recognizably Minute Maid.

The out-of-home campaign also kept messaging simple and straightforward, sticking to the wholesome core of their product and the benefit that it serves. The brand emphasized its uncomplicated message of providing consumers with healthy nutrients to fuel their day, tying their billboards together through the common thread of vitamin D.

The Moral of the Story

These rebrands are a cautionary tale on not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A rebrand is a careful balance between preserving what works, scrapping what doesn’t, and building around a well-crafted brand strategy. Here’s what we’re taking away from the rebrands this year:

• X (Twitter): A stark and complete upheaval of a well-known brand is rarely a good idea. Take it slow, and tell the public what you’re thinking. 

• HUGO BOSS: Recognize when your target audience(s) have changed. Start from strategy and you’ve got the makings of a successful rebrand.

• Minute Maid: A rebrand for a global giant is hard. But with straightforward messaging, a finger on the pulse, and slight tweaks, you can still make big impact.

A well-executed rebrand can better communicate your ever-changing brand to your audience, and with just a few case studies to learn from, you can kick off your process on the right foot.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

Why Your Logo Design Needs a Refresh (And How to Get It Done!)

Logos are perhaps the most instantly recognizable component of company branding. In fact, 75% of consumers find logo design to be the most recognizable component of brand recognition. Not only that, but the impact of this brand recognition can be felt financially. 25% of adults are more likely to make a purchase due to familiar branding or logos. But we don’t need to tell you that, you’ve already perfected your company logo and there’s no need to ever change it…right? Even so, take a look at our checklist for signs that the most recognizable part of your branding might need a little love.

RELATED: 3 Simple Rules of Unforgettable Logo Design

When & Why You Need a Logo Refresh

At its best, a logo should be an instantly recognizable emblem of your company. An “ownable” logo will be distinctly you, differentiating from other companies and expressing the overall strategy of your branding visually. If you’ve already gone through the painstaking process of developing the perfect logo, you might be wondering why it might need a little revamping. Here are some indicators that you might be in need of a logo refresh:

• Big picture changes are afoot. Your company goals, purpose, vision or target audiences have changed since your company’s logo was originally designed. In order to align your visual communication with your strategy, a logo refresh is in order.

• Your logo is feeling a bit stale. Your logo bares the trends and styles of yesteryear.

• Your logo isn’t working across different applications. Your beautifully designed logo isn’t looking so beautiful on physical goods, for example.

• You feel a need to level up, hopefully with your logo design 2.0.

How to Succeed in Logo Design

Considering your logo should look equally great as a social media profile picture, on a billboard, or on a shopping bag, logo design should avoid too much detail. While this might feel limiting, it’s also a study in making tremendous impact with minimal design. Thinking about all the applications for your logo should proceed any logo refresh. In order to do your logo design justice in any of its numerous applications, it’s helpful to print out the logo to study it with a fine-toothed comb. Here’s how to critique your logo design like a pro.

• The Look and Feel: Start by thinking about the overall impression you get when you look at your logo. What types of feelings does it communicate? What does it remind you of, and who’s the intended audience for this message or feeling? Take a step back from the fine details and make sure that it sends the type of message you want to send.

• Weight: Words with the most weight (usually either bolder or bigger) should place emphasis on an important part of your logo. Say your logo out loud according to the weight of each word and make sure the right stuff is amplified.

• White Space: Draw a box around your logo and observe where you’re seeing the empty spaces. Which areas need to be filled out? Although there are always exceptions to the rule of course, best practice is to avoid big gaps in your logo, paying special attention to letters that extend far up or down and create voids that might look off in certain applications.

• Legibility: Adding ornamental elements or connecting certain letters in your logo might make for a more balanced design, but it’s impossible to ignore legibility. Printing the logo at an inch in width is a safe size to test out your legibility at smaller sizes.

• Consistency: Your logo should have a consistent look. A good way to think about this is that all the letters in your logo should look like it was written by the same tool. If your logo looks like it was written with a calligraphy brush, then that should follow for the entirety of the logo.
  

Similarly, the entire logo should sit on the same baseline. When doing this, think about the shapes of the letters and how that affects consistency. For example, letters with a curve at the base like “a, b, c, d, e, g, o, p, q, s, u” would sit lower than other letters so they align on the base. Give this quiz a whirl to help train your eye.

Consistent space between letters is also crucial. The letter “f” naturally gives way to more space on the right whereas the letter “m” doesn’t leave much room on either side. Since we’ve gotten so accustomed to these letters, flipping them upside down or blurring the logo might help ensure consistency with fresh eyes. You can also give this quiz a whirl to help train your eye.

What a Logo Refresh Really Looks Like

While knowing the tips can be helpful, it’s easier to visualize the effects of a logo refresh when you see real examples. Experience the effects of the logo refresh yourself when you take a look at the shifts in the logo design of these well-known brands.

Coca-Cola: The Coca-Cola logo has experienced numerous refreshes from 1886, but has stayed true to the general look and feel of its branding. With the exception of its very first logo, the rest of the iterations of its logo have featured calligraphy. While the ornamental curves and loops have changed, the logo has maintained a feeling that is consistent with the brand. Some of the logos feature inconsistencies in the letter weights and baselines, but ultimately landed on the very consistent logo of today.

---

Lacoste: With its signature alligator, the Lacoste logo has maintained its “thing” since 1933 even with visible changes in its style. The refreshes in the logo speak to the trends of the times, landing on its logo with modern typography, with its more understated yet recognizable alligator.

---

Tabasco: For a brand that’s been around since 1868, the difficult task is to hold onto the heritage and history while giving the logo a much needed refresh. The logo design of the recently revamped Tabasco has stayed true to its traditions, paying homage with the same shape and look. The typography experienced a slight but poignant upgrade by infusing a bit more personality with intentional play on proportions, especially on letters like the “B” and the “S.”

Putting a Logo Refresh in Motion

When the face of your brand is your logo, refreshing it can be the best way to make an immediate impression about your changing brand in an effective way. With the nuts and bolts of logo design under your belt, the next step is to connect with your audience in communicating the message you’re looking to pass along.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

5+ Tips on Finding Your Target Audience

One of the most powerful steps to setting your brand on the right path is finding your target audience.

When you know who you’re talking to, you’re giving yourself the chance to communicate more effectively. For all the hard work you put into your product or service, it will deliver more sharply if you can visualize a picture of your target audience with the use of personas.

Getting Started

For those who are not familiar, a target persona is a fictional profile of a person who represents one of your key target audience groups, based on characteristics of your customers. When developing a target audience, we’ve got a few suggestions to make sure your efforts come to more fruitful outcomes.

• Beyond Surface Demographics: You might be familiar with creating target audience personas based on demographic information like age, gender, and location. This information is definitely helpful for finding your target audience, for example, you might communicate with your younger target audience via TikTok. However, considering psychographic information such as characteristics, interests, attitudes, and aspirations, will aid in successfully communicating your product or service with poignant communication that resonates with your audience. While these factors are good starting points, they may be customized depending on the industry you’re in. For example, a clothing brand might consider style descriptions along with the psychographic information.

• Checking Out the Competition: You may already have some understanding of these factors if you currently run a business, but checking out competitors’ audiences may be a good place to start for new businesses. Although your target audience shouldn’t be identical to theirs, you can get a good sense for a similar audience, and maybe even get a sense of niche markets that are being neglected. 

• Starting With Benefits: If you’re a new business without a set customer base, try listing out each feature of your product or service. From there, consider the benefit of those features, and who each of those benefits stands to serve, which will eventually lead to a clearer picture of your target audience.

• Digging Deep: When you’re creating a sample target persona, you might look at a sampling of your target audience’s social media. A lot of the psychographic information might not be readily available. Rather, you’ll have to do the work of deducing your target’s values via their social media posts, who they’re following, and what they seem to be concerned with. 

• Do Your Research: Once you’re well on your way to finding your target audience, read up on research relevant to your target. Look out for blogs and articles that might inform you of your audience, along with forums where your target audience voices its opinions. Checking out Reddit forums can give you a good sense of what people are talking about with regards to your topics. You might review survey results, or even conduct your own survey to dive in deeper for information you want.

The Target Persona Worksheet

Because finding your target audience is easier said than done, we’re providing a freebie worksheet to help you create your own target audience persona with ease. If your business already exists, filling out this worksheet might require a bit of investigation into your followers and getting a sense of who they are. If you’re a new business owner, you might take a closer look at the followers of your competitors, or other brands that offer similar services or products. To help you understand how it can be used, we’re including an example of a target audience persona for our fictional clothing brand here. 

Getting Hands-on Support

If you’re kicking off a small business and looking to break into your industry with a bang, we offer the Brand Builder Course (an in-person, virtual live event, or online video course) to give you a little more hands-on support. Beyond target audience, the course covers brand strategy, visual identity, and messaging, with helpful worksheets and resources to support you on your exciting journey. Sign up here.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

10+ Considerations for Sustainable Brands

Sustainability has become the dominating buzzword echoing beyond specific industries, audiences, and countries, leading to more and more eco-friendly brands. When you consider the reason for its prolific spread, the rise of sustainable brands follows the trend of people wanting to see themselves in the brands with which they interact. Employees and consumers alike want their values to align with brands. 

With regards to company culture, 63% of employees are more motivated at companies with clearly defined and communicated values compared to the 31% at other companies. Morale was found to be 55% higher in companies with a strong program on sustainability, which then leads to a stronger team with less likelihood for turnover. On the consumer’s side, 94% of Gen Z consumers expect brands to have a say in social issues, and 90% of them would make a purchase with a clear benefit to society. With brands selling values beyond just products and services, sustainability has become a significant value add.

But with the sheer number of supposedly sustainable brands, how do you differentiate from greenwashing and really walking the walk? While most people have some idea of how to make consumer products more sustainable, the tech industry presents more of a mystery. In the tech industry, what factors are relevant to be considered sustainable? And how do tech eco-friendly brands show customers that they are really walking the walk? Here’s how to brand effectively, and some design elements you might employ as a truly green company.

What it Means

For consumer products and services, this means considering whether the packaging is compostable or at the very least recyclable, and if the product can be reused or repurposed. Are you making strides to use plant-based materials to create its products and services? Are you reducing polluting substances and greenhouse gas emissions by using renewable energy instead? What about low-impact manufacturing, multi-functionality, and energy efficiency? Reflecting on all these elements thoroughly will help you communicate your sustainable stance clearly to the consumer.

How it Supports Business

Sustainability boasts both short-term and long-term effects that benefits eco-friendly brands, and makes it, well, more sustainable for the future. Financially, sustainable brands reduce energy costs and waste to save money, not to mention the numerous laws going into effect. Effectively branding as a sustainable company means you elevate your brand as a whole. This means attracting and retaining consumers and employees, making your brand more desirable in the long run.

Sustainability in the Tech Industry

For big corporations, having an easily accessible Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) report speaks volumes to consumers with regards to sustainability. To take it a step further, having a B Corp Certification signifies to your consumers that you have taken steps to consider these ESG factors. Here are the actions you can take to make your brand more sustainable:

Tackling Your Energy Sources: Because data centers account for an estimated 3.2% of the world’s carbon emissions, scrutinizing the physical databases for cloud storage and softwares is a good place to start. Taking steps to transition a greener energy source for these data centers will support your goals as a sustainable brand. You can also avoid using unnecessary energy to cool these centers, with an optimal computer operating temperature of around 72°F/22°C. You can also mind data storage sizes, such as setting limits on inactive accounts, server utilization, image and video sizes and uploads, and more. Being thoughtful about data storage can also help lower costs and waste production while supporting your site, app, or platform to be more efficient and high-performing.

Thinking About the Big Picture: While it’s great to consider the energy sources, you can make a more significant impact by considering the entire process. Making sure that the entirety of the chain supply is keeping up with these standards will help maintain sustainability from all direct and indirect sources.

Being Picky With Hardware: Although much of the tech industry feels intangible, don’t forget about the makeup of your hardware. The tech industry faces a dilemma: while the need and method for acquiring rare-earth elements cause a slew of negative effects (erosion, sinkholes, and contamination to name a few), they are essential to produce electronic hardware. Reclaiming and reusing rare earth metals in products, and being choosy about your mining supplier is a good way to grapple with this difficulty.

Making Easy Changes: Using motion-detecting lights to avoid light pollution helps support the animals in your ecosystem. The use of automated technology like lights or automated power for devices are an easy way to conserve energy. Composting and recycling is a must, and donating unneeded furniture are all small changes that lead to big impact.

How to Elevate Sustainable Brands With Design

So you’ve done your research and ensured you’ve really taken steps to be environmentally friendly. Now comes the fun part: thinking about design factors that support your sustainable stance. Rather than going the overused, monochromatic green route, you can creatively support your sustainable branding by emphasizing your sustainable decisions with design. Here are some of our favorite examples of brands that made a statement while avoiding the cliches: 4 Environmentally Friendly Brands to Follow this Earth Day.

The Big Picture

Above anything else, eco-friendly brands are on the rise because the severity of climate change affects, and will continue to affect us in the future. Thinking about what companies in all industries can do will be crucial to bringing about change. Consumers are increasingly investing smartly in companies whose values align with theirs, and investing in this crucial issue will not only support your business, but also the planet.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

Why Websites Are Important for Your Business

In a world where any and all questions are directed toward a search engine, it makes sense that websites are an absolute must. It is a necessary digital introduction, and one way to make a stellar first impression. In fact, 81% of sales are a result of product research online beforehand. So all things considered, sales are nearly impossible without a proper website these days. But what do you need to include, and how do you make it enticing for your potential customers? One hint is that website conversions go up by 33% when you invest in proper branding. If you’re feeling intimidated by the time and effort put into building your website, we’ve got plenty of reasons why websites are important.

• Controlling the Narrative: One big reason why websites are important is that they are one of the few ways your company can fully express its identity. With the wealth of reviews and articles on the internet, it’s impossible to control all the information consumers might find about your company. Taking time to build your company website grants you control in this outlet, portraying your story in the way that you want. Your website is also an easy way to feature company announcements and updates.

• Gaining leads: Even if a visitor doesn’t make a purchase right away, your website can present opportunities to gather their contact information through email lists or newsletters. While they might not make a purchase the first time they visit, continued communication may present opportunities for sales later down the road.

• Gathering consumer info: Various data analysis tools allow for gathering information on your website visitors. Where are they located? How much time did they spend on each of your pages? How did they land on your website? Websites can also offer a way to test out promotions and discounts without spending extra on marketing efforts on these visitors. Digital footprints give you information on how to more efficiently target your potential and current customers, demonstrating the importance of a company website.

• Saving time on customer service: While phone calls and emails are necessary and helpful, you can avoid wasting unnecessary time by offering basic information on your website. Instead of answering simple questions individually via emails and phone calls, customers can easily access this information on the website before they reach out.

How Branding and Design Lay the Groundwork

Creating a great company website takes work, but branding and design can lay out the blueprint and make it a little easier to build. With branding and design well thought out from the beginning, you can be sure your website is the product of strategy and intention. Don’t take our word for it, see the key role that branding and design play for these websites that live proof of why websites are important.

Magic Spoon: As a healthy cereal for adults, Magic Spoon’s website is a perfect emblem of what they stand for as a brand. With whimsical animations like squiggles, moving spoons, and flying cereal, the branding makes the website stand out while also clearly showcasing its hero products. At the same time, the website doesn’t neglect the important information, like nutrition facts, and their story.

The Warren Trust: As a trust for architectural education, the architecture of The Warren Trust’s website dovetails nicely with their larger purpose. With a dual scrolling page, visitors get to read about who they are and what they do all at once.

Ivee: A wellness company designed for the digital age, Ivee’s website stands out because of its ability to explain their services in a clear way with an artistic touch. The website looks clean, simple, and modern, with copy that explains their unique services, while their photography reads professional without feeling stuffy.

Vantis: In a similar vein, we designed Vantis to be accessible and readable for older audiences, while being professional, modern, and clean for investors and medical professionals. With helpful features like animated arrows, as well as soft colors and hand-drawn illustrations, the design of Vantis’s website speaks to their brand mission.

The Pudding: The Pudding portrays its essays in a visually accessible manner, allowing design and brand purpose to come together. While many of their essays contain heavy information that might be difficult to understand, interactive graphs, games, and motion graphics make it easier and motivating to absorb the information.

Putting in the Work

Now that you know why websites are important, you know that having a company website is no longer an option. Whether you’re building a structured space with all the details or you’re looking to make an abstract and artistic statement, your website is a form of brand expression. When you take time on your branding and design and mirror it onto your website, you stand to gain much more than just sales in the long run.

RELATED: 6 Website Design Tips to Achieve Your Goals

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

7 Methods for Your Branding Color Palettes

If you can immediately associate McDonald’s with its classic yellow and red, or Tiffany & Co.’s exact shade of robin’s egg blue, you’ve already experienced the heady impact of color on branding firsthand. But these effective branding color palettes don’t often occur by sheer strokes of luck. Color palette methodology can help you pick the colors that not only look good together, but also support your branding goals. 

What is Color Palette Methodology?

Color palette methodology uses the color wheel (a 1666 invention by Isaac Newton), to guide the choosing of colors for a harmonious palette. There are 7 major types of color palette methods, which are most effectively shown using a color wheel due to its visual ability to show the relationships between colors. While rules can always be broken of course, these methods are guiding principles behind colors that will most likely work best together.

How Does it Affect Branding and Design?

Color is a powerful element of branding and design due to its ability to draw emotional reactions from consumers. While some reactions to color are more culturally determined (such as red being associated with luck or aggression, depending on where in the world you are), there are many widely experienced reactions to color that are immediate and intense. It’s no wonder then that color is arguably one of the most powerful tools of branding; consumers’ recognition of a brand was shown to increase by a surprising 80% through the use of color. A whopping 90% of people make up their thoughts about a product based solely on color. 

Getting Started

Now that you know that color is a powerful tool in branding and design, let’s talk about the actual process of using it. Here are the steps you need to consider when building branding color palettes.

1. Consider Color Psychology: Start off by considering colors and their effects on your target audience. What are the moods, thoughts, or feelings you want to affect when people first interact with your brand? Maybe yellow is the way to go if optimism and energy are a key part of your branding. Black might be your choice if boldness and confidence are at the forefront of your branding. This crucial consideration will help determine your dominant colors.

Pro Tip: When in doubt, test it out. If you want to double check that your colors are communicating your brand values, you can test them out with a group and check out the reactions they have to the colors you have selected.

2. Start With Color Theory Basics: The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. These are the basic colors that can be combined to create the secondary colors: orange, purple, and green. Tertiary colors combine primary and secondary colors to create a whole new range of colors. 

In order to go from here to the complexity of the color wheel, we add white and black to the hue, or the pure color. The tint refers to the hue, combined with white. The tone refers to the hue, combined with white and black. The shade refers to the hue, combined with black. 

Pro Tip: There are 2 common color standardization systems in design: CMYK and RGB. CMYK is a subtractive model that assumes you subtract colors to get white, whereas RGB is an additive model that assumes you add colors to get white. CMYK is used for print purposes whereas RGB is used for electronic displays.

3. Choose Your Dominant Colors: You will then select 1 or 2 dominant colors, and make sure to note the exact hex codes, rather than a vague color. These will be at the core of your logos, and most likely the colors that will distinguish your brand from others to give you that unique edge. Be careful to stay away from a wide array of colors that may distract and interfere from clean branding. 

Pro Tip: Color doesn’t happen in isolation! Think about the context of your color when selecting your branding color palettes. Color behaves differently depending on the colors and shapes around it. A kelly green behaves differently when placed next to a dark blue, versus when it’s placed next to a lime green.

4. Apply Your Color Palette Method: 

Monochromatic: A monochromatic color method uses shades and tints of the same color, which usually results in branding color palettes that is foolproof with regards to clashing. However, the downside is that finding accent colors for CTA buttons and the like can be more difficult.

---

Analogous: An analogous color method makes use of 1 color and the 2 colors directly next to it. It consists of more colors than the monochromatic palette, but without the variety being overly contrasting. This lends the analogous palette to being a favorite among brands that want a softer branding. Think branding for a baby clothing line, for example.

---

Complementary: This color method makes use of colors on the opposite sides of the color wheel, with tints of those colors. Because of the contrast between the colors, branding color palettes using this method make a statement. Having 1 or 2 clearly dominant colors would be extra important here to really pull your branding together despite such a contrast.

---

Split Complementary: Similar to complementary, the split complementary color uses the colors across from each other in the color wheel and the colors adjacent as well. Again, this method provides contrast similar to the complementary method, but having the contrast along with many other colors means that you will have to fiddle around to find just the right cohesive combination.

---

Triadic: The triadic color method forms a triangle with its colors on the color wheel. This is another way to get great contrast in your color palette, but because you have 3 contrasting colors, it may be smart to play with tints of the same hue to have clear dominant colors.

---

Square: The colors in this method form a square, which provides contrast, but again makes dominant colors all the more important.

---

Rectangle: While the rectangle is similar to the square, the square color method provides a little more subtlety, giving the bold colors a little more room to shine.

Putting it Into Practice

With the color methods in mind, you can get started on building the color palette that best underlines the intricacies of your branding. Using 5-10 hues with 1-2 dominant colors differing in shades or tints will be the core of the palette. Make sure the colors all have the same tones, or risk clashing. You can avoid risk of clashing by noting exact hex codes for your carefully chosen colors (rather than a vague blue), leading to harmonious branding color palettes. Equally as important to your palette is documenting the rules around the application of your colors in your brand guidelines. Remember that consistency is key in branding and design–and with color being such a powerful psychological tool, you want to make sure your hard work on color earns all the impact it deserves.

Meet the Team: Anastasia Salazar

Q: Let’s talk about your road to design.

A: It's funny because I definitely didn't even know what design really was when I started going to school for it. I knew I wanted to do something artistic, but I also wanted stability. I was working at a youth nonprofit in high school and part of the program helped us figure out what they wanted to do in college, and I landed on commercial arts or something like that. In our first year in school, we were mostly doing foundational art — painting and sculpting and things like that — which is so different than what applied visual design and graphic design is like. I didn't really understand what visual design and graphic design was, but I got really lucky and I ended up falling in love with it. I have been doing design professionally for about 8 years. 

Q: Where do you turn for inspiration?

A: I think a lot of times it'll come from going to galleries, museums and seeing other designer’s work. But I'm also really inspired by different mediums. So I’ll find a silk scarf at a thrift store that has a really interesting pattern or color palette, and I'll borrow from different mediums to bring into my work. I think a lot of times it's what's around me, like hand-painted signs or fauna and flora. I also love going to art book fairs. Those are the best.

RELATED: Meet the Team: Juhee Lee

Q: What are some challenges you face as a designer?

A: I think a lot of times I'm torn with time and resource constraint versus the kind of exploration that I actually want to do. When you're working on client projects you have to be mindful of time and money being spent and it doesn't always leave room for experimenting. So that's always a challenge. Because at the end of the day, you just want to make the best work you can possibly make. That's always a balance. I think the best way to overcome that is to have a personal project going on so that you have a place to put that energy. You can experiment and not have any constraints, and it doesn't have to come out looking great.

Q: Do you have any interesting personal projects in the works?

A: I've been doing some block printing and having a good time with that. I've done different printing techniques like screen printing and letterpress. They're really fun but you need a pretty big set up and space. With block printing, you can do it at home and at any size. And you get to work with your hands, so that's been really fun. I'm working on some prints of my cats right now. 

Q: What are your goals for the agency in the next 5 years?

A: We've been hosting the Brand Builder Workshop, which has been wonderful to connect with people and get them excited about branding. We’re working on turning the workshop into a video course, which will make the information super accessible to anyone!

Q: How do you spend your free time?

A: I like to travel, dance, garden, try new foods and wines. My happy place is at the beach and my guilty pleasure is anything true crime!

Q: You have deep connections to the Bay Area. What do you feel is so special about it? 

A: It’s hard to wrap it up! We have a unique identity, culture and history and I feel like a lot of the people have a sense of wanting to give back to the city that raised us, myself included. There's a really strong sense of community amongst the people that grew up here. My family didn't lock our doors for like a long time while I was growing up, which is surprising for a city. There were always people we knew around that would look out for us and I think it speaks to the feeling of community.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

6 Website Design Tips to Achieve Your Goals

So you get why a website is important. It’s a must-have that any established business has in the modern age, akin with social media or email addresses. Maybe you know you need one but haven’t had the time to invest in creating one. Maybe you have a website but know there’s improvement to be made. Have you taken a step back to think about  your goals, specific to your company and your audience? In the hustle and bustle of creating a website, make sure you slow down and consider these website design tips that can help support your goals.

Start With Your Website Goals

Before you create the website of your dreams, consider what action you want your audience to take. Then consider what your audience looks like. Start with their needs, and let that guide you to think about how they will interact with your website. Focus groups and user task testing are some great ways to further learn about your audience’s behavior and needs. When we created the website for Vantis, whose target audience are folks aged 65 and up, accessibility was key to our design. We provided elements to support website navigation, such as adding prominent arrows and larger type. A little time spent on taking the perspective of your audience can go a long way.

Think About the Customer’s Journey

When imagining your target audience, the natural next step is to consider how they are coming to your website. What is their understanding of the service or product that you provide? A customer that reaches your website through a Google search for your company by name is going to be different from a customer who lands on your website through a paid ad. Your website should be designed according to your clearly defined goals. What is the action that you want them to take?

Show Your Homepage Some Love

As you might already be aware, the general public’s attention span is strikingly short. The average time that your audience will spend on a given page of your website is less than a minute! Of the website design tips, making an impression, and doing it quickly, is perhaps your top priority. Providing an intriguing headline or an interactive element on the top half of your homepage is going to be your best bet for making a positive first impression. For traditional websites, this means placing call to action buttons on the landing page above the fold, before the audience has time to scroll down or leave your website.

Mind the F-Pattern

Unfortunately, you should come to terms with the fact that your audience won’t be reading all the words you’ve carefully crafted. Users tend to look for points through a web page that guide their reading, and research shows that this creates an “F” pattern where readers attend to only part of the information. What this means for you is that each section of your website should be able to make sense on its own, even when a reader hasn’t read as  thoroughly as you might like. This means that you should make good use of visuals, minimizing copy when possible.

Consider Devices

In framing these website design tips, consider that more than half of your website traffic comes from mobile users. Meaning that while desktop and laptop views are important, your mobile website is equally, if not more critical to polish. Beyond the technical aspects, you must consider mobile sites from the beginning as you envision the overall layout. For example, your banner image might not work in a portrait format if you are wanting to adapt it to a mobile site.

Stick to the Narrative

When designing your website, don’t forget the bigger story you want to tell. The images and copy you want to feature will all need to support the work of your branding, creating a consistent message for your audience. For example, to strengthen Dr. Aditi’s key service offering, we featured visuals and copy that emphasized her skillset as a speaker rather than her experience in writing.

Designing an Intuitive Website

Taking the time to critically think about your goals in relation to the customer’s needs is the best way to start. Creating beautiful visuals and catchy copy is half the battle, but these website design tips will make sure they’re actually seen. Your website is a powerful tool that, if harnessed correctly, can serve to drive the results you want to see.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

Celebrating Women’s History Month With Women in Design

If you search the internet, you’ll be hard pressed to find a neat history of women in the world of design. That’s no coincidence, as much of the documentation of women’s achievements has been neglected. But with Women’s History Month well under way, we look to put women in design front and center. While the written history of women in design, particularly in fashion spans back as far as the 1880s, the history of recognizing women in design is unfortunately a much shorter one. 

As difficult a pill as it is to swallow, it is a logical outcome of the interaction between the struggles of women in general and the struggles of women in art. The inventing of new names and male personas as a female artist is one natural byproduct of a reckoning with the challenges of women in art. The action is an attempt “...to be taken seriously in a world that trivializes and sexualizes women, and to unpick the gender roles stitched deeply into the fabric of society,” says Frieze.

RELATED: Why There Are So Few Women-Owned Design Agency — & How We Can Fix That

Not only were women being denied due credit, they were limited in the art they could create, being permitted to create within designated spheres deemed sensible for women (e.g., embroidery, homemaking, etc.). Struggling to thrive in the male-dominated design industry has been the theme of women in the 20th and 21st centuries, and it continues to be the resounding challenge. While more than half of undergraduates in design are women, only about 11% are in leadership roles. 

So we speak with one such woman in leadership, Anastasia Salazar, Founder and Creative Director of Anastasia Salazar Ltd. in San Francisco, California. Read on as we champion women in design in celebration of women’s history month.

The Struggle

With an extensive history of gender inequality, it’s no surprise that many of the struggles of women in design echo the struggles of women in general. Much of the commonplace language around being “feminine” draws negative connotations in design as well. Salazar notes that she often gets feedback from clients pushing back on “feminine” messaging or design. The difficulty is that everyone defines “feminine” in a slightly different way. “I think most of the time, that means flowery, ornamental, lots of pinks, and pastels, maybe softer, eager messaging,” says Salazar. Because the idea of “feminine” design has come to denote less respect in the design world, this socially constructed hesitation logically follows. “I’ve noticed that I’ve [...] internalized those beliefs myself at times,” says Salazar. “I’m still working to unlearn them.”

Lemons into Lemonade

While the obstacles are vast, women in design past, present, and future find ways to combat them through a sense of community. Coming together with women through communities like Freelancing Females is one way that women support and appreciate each other.

Knowing the facts is helpful as well, with resources such as the AIGA Design Census which provides a big picture of the design industry and helps expose the issues. Simply knowing and exposing the facts are helpful; designers can understand facts like the pay gap and the makeup of women in design in concrete numbers. Reading the stories of historical struggles also provides much needed attention to the obscured stories of women in design.

With only .1% of creative agencies being owned by women, Salazar occupies a lonely space. But with a creative perspective heavily informed by these challenges, Salazar also found a way to channel these challenges into ways to champion women. “One of our core values is to empower women,” says Salazar, who works largely with women-owned businesses and works to amplify their creativity. “I think it’s had a big impact on the direction of my work and the type of work I take on for sure,” she adds.

Rewriting Design Herstory

Although the world is brimming with brilliant women designers, we spotlight some that have caught our attention and the attention of the world. 

Louise Fili: As an Italian-American artist based in New York, artist Louise Fili is lauded as a wearer of many hats. As a master of the full gamut of packaging design, calligraphy, packaging design, and branding, Fili’s award-winning achievements have inspired women worldwide. While her packaging designs and logos are widely recognizable, perhaps the most impressive achievement is her moxie. “If you have a problem with me being a woman, then I have a problem with you being my client,” said Fili in an interview with Behance.

---

Lotta Nieminen: Another highly celebrated artist based in Paris and New York, Lotta Nieminen is recognized for her strikingly minimalist branding, art direction, and graphic design. With a clean, modern look made celebratory with bright colors, Nieminen has worked with clients worldwide. As a Finnish artist who fell in love with New York, she has worked to embrace an American sense of confidence. “This confidence means seeing the strengths in my work, not becoming uncritical or overruling your sense of self-awareness,” said Nieminen in an interview with Finnish Cultural Institute in New York.

---

Na Kim: Seoul and Berlin-based artist Na Kim celebrates the line between the everyday and art. With thoughtful manipulations of shapes, lines, and colors, Kim’s graphic design is punctuated by the impressive number of awards, exhibitions and other recognitions. Her art dances playfully between structure and whimsy, rules and chance, inspiring many globally. “You have to know about yourself first and then make your own decisions. Otherwise, it is very complicated to create anything,” said Kim in an interview with METAL.

Beyond Limits

While the challenges certainly do and will continue to exist, finding solidarity in other women in design is the way to go. The connections formed within the stories, communities, and art serve as uplifting reminders that there is a place for women in design beyond the beauty standards, gender roles, pay gaps, and other societal obstacles. In fact, Neri Oxman, a highly celebrated artist said that the biggest crisis for designers today is “Empathy.”

Resources

If you’re feeling extra studious, feel free to check out these readings to dive in deeper:

• AIGA Eye on Design: On women in design not receiving due credit, and how one book has a different approach.

• Hyperallergic: Women in design from 1900 to now.

• Fast Company: Books, facts, and exhibits to highlight the achievements of women in design.

• Designing Women: Women in design through the 20th century.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

2023 Branding and Design Trends

Wherever we turn nowadays, everything from book covers to packaging design feels flat, sterile, minimal, and much too predictable. While the clean aesthetics are easy to consume and process, it feels like a big change has been brewing, and one that will swing the pendulum all the way to a wild side. Here’s what we’ve seen, and where we think the branding and design trends are headed.

Out With the Old

Look no further than Smile Direct Club for an example of the branding and design trends of the last 5 to 10 years. With minimal, flat, and modern branding, a clean and simple sans-serif typeface, and a conversational, witty messaging, it embodies the reigning trend of yesteryear. It’s true, its branding has merit, but it feels tired. While the clean designs and casual messaging might be easy to understand, it’s playing to an audience that wants to break from the predictability. 

In With the New

There’s no denying that the last few years have been hard. With a worldwide pandemic among other tragedies, it’s been a bumpy and eventful time. It follows, then, that the favored branding and design trends of the future seem to center around a nostalgic sense of optimism, whimsy, and playfulness. Providing the audience with a moment of delight and surprise as a reprieve from the current state of the world, trends in branding are turning toward experimentation and wonder.

Anti-branding

The endless bombarding of media leads naturally to an audience of smart, hyper-aware consumers. Today’s consumers have looked behind the curtain and seek authenticity beyond the shiny packaging. This has led to the continuing popularity of understated branding, handwriting, and imprecise typography, all of which achieves an undeveloped feel that, while intentional, feels unbranded. This desire for authenticity has led to the success of user-generated ads like Apple’s  “Shot on iPhone” campaign, as well as influencer partnerships and organic content.

---

Y2K Evolution

As we turn to our inner child, branding and design is continuing to do  the very same. Enter remastered Y2K aesthetics, complete with ornamental typography and bubble gum hyper-saturation. While the new design trends emulate the sentiments of a long-ago past, the designs are elevated with modern digital tools, creating new textures and experimenting with modern effects like 3D design. We predict even more ornamental and other-worldly typefaces to emerge in the future.

---

Texture

We crave texture. Whether it’s more graininess in illustration or experimenting with claymation, the branding and design world craves a departure from the flat designs, longing for dimension. When we see the number of brands promoting plain packaging, we turn to brands standing out from the crowd with texture and details.

---

Direct Messaging

While the trends in branding of the last few years took on an overplayed witty, whimsical, and humorous tone, the emerging tone seems to put relatability, personability, and humanity front and center. Take RXBAR for example. The messaging pillars of this protein bar company celebrate the transparency and quality of their products through direct copy and anti-branding packaging. By labeling their simple ingredients prominently on the packaging and giving simple facts in their copy, they play on the fact that their savvy consumers can be the judge the quality of the product themselves.

Putting it Together

If Smile Direct Club represents tired branding and design, take a look at Bite, a D2C company also in the business of selling dental products among other everyday toiletries. With flash photography and spontaneous appearance of pastel colors, the brand hones in on the anti-branding trend . The messaging pillars, mirroring the design, are transparently addressed on the About page: “Bite started with two questions: Why does toothpaste come in plastic tubes and what exactly are we putting in our bodies when we brush our teeth?” The pillars echo a popular trend in and of themselves, centered around sustainability and transparency. With a voice and tone that’s straightforward and human, Bite brings new trends together for a branding that is relatable, optimistic, enticing, authentic, and clean.

A Year of Wonder

The savvy consumers of today are well-versed in the wiles of the marketing world, numbing them to the same old strategies. They crave authenticity, interaction with content, color, and unexpected proportions, dimensions, and textures. Needless to say, we’re at the intersection of polar opposites. Get excited for a loud, vibrant, and bold era of branding and design ahead.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.

13+ Beautiful Examples of San Francisco Design

The story of San Francisco design is a story of color. The mixture of colors in the city is one that overwhelmingly defines the city, reflecting the rich mosaic of cultures, identities, and historical events at its core. Although there’s not one way to define the type of art that comes out of San Francisco and California at large, the common thread is the vibrancy and inspiration that’s tucked into the architecture, the streets, the posters, and pretty much everywhere. Here is a spotlight on some noteworthy art from San Francisco designers who paved the way for San Francisco and California design.

Psychedelic Posters and the Counterculture

A classic emblem of San Francisco counterculture in the 60s, Bonnie MacLean’s psychedelic posters are characterized by swirly typography and faces. In Los Angeles, similarly, Colby Poster Printing Company created posters characterized by bright colors and a technique that allowed for rapid mass printing. While the neon colors served the practical purpose of being legible from afar, they also represented the vibrance of the counterculture. Both types of posters channeled the power of the underground, taking influence from the world around them and adding to the uniquely San Francisco design.

Social Movement Art

With the distribution of the Black Panther newspapers in Oakland in 1967, Emory Douglas played a key role in using art to convey the messaging. With Douglas’s support, the paper reached up to 400,000 readers, and also supported the political messaging of ¡Basta Ya! (a publication supporting 7 falsely accused Latinx youths). Beyond this revolutionary newspaper, San Francisco Bay Area design has been largely impacted by social movements throughout time.

Architecture & Street Signs

For many, the colorful architecture of San Francisco is vital to the image of San Francisco that they have in their heads. The history of the modern San Francisco architecture goes back to 1849 with the gold rush, when Italianates, or homes that resembled Italian villas and farmhouses were all the rage. With the influence of the world around it (capitalism, the turn of the century, the Great Depression, etc.), San Franciscan homes changed with the times, developing into the numerous prevalent styles of different SF neighborhoods. San Francisco’s homes reflect its colorful history, with around 16 styles, including Art Deco, Queen Anne, Mission Revival, and Postmodern.

San Francisco’s street signs visually communicate its history as well, also rooted in the Gold Rush. Differing in lines, angles, borders, backgrounds, reflective qualities, and enamel, the street signs symbolize the different phases of the city’s history. The street signs are so well-loved that they were even developed into typography.

Local Pride

The kind of art that touches locals is the kind of art that starts from the everyday. If you grew up in San Francisco or elsewhere in California, you might recognize some of these iconic masterpieces that are embedded in the everyday history of the world around you.

Muni Logo: Walter Landor, creator of one of the biggest branding agencies in the world, is the mastermind behind the now legendary Muni logo. With the changes in the transit system, Landor created the now famous “worm” design set on a sunset background. The Muni logo demonstrates the lasting power of a good logo, standing as a recognizable symbol of SF transit.

Hand-Painted Signs: While at first glance the hand-painted signs of the streets of San Francisco and California simply draw passersby into businesses with bright, detailed paintings, these signs present a piece of Latinx heritage, showing pride for neighborhoods, countries, and cultures.

Ghost Signs: Marking the popularity of hand-painted signs from 1906 to the mid 1950’s, fading hand-painted signs span the whole of the city as landmarks of San Francisco design. By studying each of these visual points of disappearing history marked by San Francisco designers, you get some insight into the layout of the city in the past, providing yet another visual story of the city.

Julie Murray

Murals: Murals are yet another artistic expression of the social, political, and cultural identities that make up San Francisco. Walking through the streets of the Mission District can shed light on the issues that concern San Francisco designers, such as social inclusion, environmental causes, and women’s rights. Clarion Alley in particular stands as a physical representation of the art community’s unity against gentrification since 1992.

Noteworthy Artists

Although the list of San Francisco designers and artists could go on and on, we highlight some artists whose work has pushed the art world forward. These artists remind us of the impressive work we can create with inspiration from the city.

Richard Diebenkorn: An artist who spent time in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, Richard Diebenkorn’s art is a testament to the way that the environment of the artist affects the art. Some of his art portrays the sharp hills of San Francisco, while other works mirror the pastel tones reminiscent of Los Angeles. 

Fred Lyon: Without description, the works of this 20th century photographer are evidently influenced by his surroundings. Not only do his photos depict the streets and bridges of the city beautifully, but the overlay of the fog serves as a sort of fingerprint on the photos as a uniquely SF aesthetic.

April Greiman: A pioneer in the very beginnings of digital art, April Greiman is an important figure in the Californian art community. Playing an important role in defining modern digital art, Greiman was also inspired by the environment around her, namely the Los Angeles sunset.

Esther Hernandez: With deep-reaching art depicting Latina and Native women, Esther Hernandez is a Californian artist who expresses issues bigger than herself. Her haunting work is highly political, playing on and twisting somewhat familiar, everyday imagery into highly evocative and sharp art.

Richard Serra: A San Francisco native, Richard Serra’s exploration of a wide variety of materials led to his eventual success as a sculptor. He is best known for his work consisting of impressive arcs and spirals that are crucial to the story of San Francisco design.

Ruth Asawa: Having lived through the Japanese internment through World War II, Ruth Asawa (“citizen of the universe”)’s vision was to transcend for a bigger cause through art. She called for inclusion and revolution, and was known for her wire sculptures.

A Common Thread

Art and design comes in many forms, but the commonality is that it always seems to have people at the center. The work of these San Francisco designers and artists are inspired by the stories of the society around them, making the art localized in the heart of the people rooted there.

Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.