We recently completed our REBRANDING and, in celebration, we are documenting the changes in this article, allowing you to compare the OLD vs. NEW identity and website.. Let’s start with a backstory first. Design a Lot is running since back in 2016, when we’ve published our first design article called “Free sans-serif fonts to use in your designs“. Since then we’ve evolved from writing design articles and posting other creatives’ design resources, to creating our own free and premium design resources like: fonts, mockups, logo templates and more. During this 8 years, Design a Lot has had:
- a minor logo facelift of the original logo.
- a rebranding back in 2022 – which turned out that it didn’t fit us well enough.
- and the rebranding of 2024, the one that we are documenting in this article.
The reasoning behind documenting this rebranding is – beside the fact that we haven’t thought of that at the first one – that the creative process that we went through during the development of our new logo, identity and website was quite fund and interesting for us, that we’ve thought that it’s worth sharing it with you. And what better way to announce the rebranding than with a documented article, right?
Before moving forward, let’s take a look at the structure of the article, which you can also use to navigate it and easily go to the points that interest you:
Table of Contents
History of Design a Lot’s Logo Designs
Like said in the beginning of this article, since 2016 we’ve had original logo, a facelift for it, a rebranding in 2022 and the rebranding of 2024. Let’s take a look at how our visual identity has evolved during the years:
Beginning of 2016
December 2016
February 2022
As you can see, the first update of the logo was just a slight facelift we’re we’ve worked on updating some of the letters like D and O.
The first rebranding was a total change of the identity, with which we were really happy, but also proud because it was made completely with our own digital assets! The symbol was created using our fonts for monograms called Brandogram Typeface, and the name was written with a font that was a work in progress at the moment of the rebranding and it eventually turned out into Cabo Soft Typeface.
Our latest rebranding details are going to be covered in the upcoming paragraphs, which leads us to the new chapter.
Let’s Talk REBRANDING: Old vs New – Logo Edition
Now, let’s dig into the logo evolution. We’ve been through a few changes – from the first design in 2016, a tweak in 2016, a full rebrand in 2022, and finally, the one we just rolled out in 2024. The logos tell a story of our journey, and we’re about to compare the old and the new. Ready to see how things have transformed?
Logo Comparison
As mentioned previously, we were really happy with how the old logo looked and proud that it has been brought into existence by using ONLY design assets that we have created! We loved the monogram and how well it fit everywhere, from social media profile pictures to website background and icons. But, in spite of all of this, we just didn’t really connect with this identity and we’ve also had the strange feeling that our audience didn’t connect with it either.
That lead us to brainstorming an updated visual identity for our brand, resulting in our latest logo. Above you can do a comparison between the two logos and see how diferent and to what extreme makeovers we’ve taken this rebranding! And moving forward, we’ll let you know how we ended up with our new logo and visual identity, what’s new and what was kept.
How did we create our newest logo?
The goal with this rebranding has been to build a new logo that can be the base of our visual identity for years to come. It had to be simple, clear, to have a bit of a modern and futuristic style, but still be relevant in the future and, most importantly, as with the previous logo, it had to be created completely out of our own design assets!
And the final result that checks all of the boxes is the logo on the left (or above, if you’re on mobile), which can be seen in it’s three colour versions: the original logo in the middle of the image, the logo in reversed colours for black/dark backgrounds on top and the logo in reversed colours for red backgrounds on the bottom.
Now you may be wondering, how is this logo completely made from your own design assets? And why is that so important? Let’s start with the latter: why is it so important that our logo is completely made from assets we’ve designed? The answer is quite simple: we are creating and selling design resources with the purpose to help other designers in their creative journey and the best way to make sure that these are valuable resources is to use them ourselves! Therefore, that’s what we did!
Now to the first question, how is this completely made with assets we’ve created? As it’s a text based logo design, the answer is quite simple: we’ve used a font that we’ve created as the basis of the logo. The font that we’ve used is called “Yet Untitled Display“, a work in progress typeface for which we’ve released a free demo font a few years ago. We still haven’t released a full typeface version yet, but with our newest visual identity you get the idea where we’re going.
We’re planning that this year or latest next year to come back with a full working version in multiple weights that we can share with you. Until then, take the free demo for a test drive!
What has changed and what was kept from the old logo?
Even though this may seem like a completely new logo, a rebranding that has nothing to do with the old logo, there are quite a few aspect that we’ve kept in order to create a brand continuity and keep it connected to the our history, even be it as short as 8 years. And some of the aspects that we’ll present next have been kept even from the first logo! If you’re have experience in logo design and branding, you may have noticed some of these aspects already.
Let’s clearly go over what has been passed from the old logo(s) to the new logo:
- What has stayed with us, even from the first logo, is the layout of the logo name. Even from beginning we’ve written our name like this: “design” on a row and “alot.net” on the next row, one above the other. This has always been a great fit for us and it seemed like the right direction to continue.
- Next, and this we have kept from the previous logo, is the way we write the domain extension .net, with the point under the first leg of n. It was one of the aspects that we’ve loved on the old rebranding and decided to have it with us in our new creative journey.
- From the first identity, our main 2 colours were black and red. In the rebranding previous to this one, we’ve kept those colours but did an upgrade on the tones. We’ve noticed that those tones of red and black fit us the best, so we’ve decided to keep them with us for the new rebranding. Colours are one of the main elements that make a brand easy to remember and to be recognised, which is a great plus for us.
- Another aspect that we’ve kept from our previous identity, even though a small one, is the use of lowercase characters in our logo name. But this makes for another good point for how brand continuity can be achieved in the case of a rebranding.
Looking over this points, what seemed like a rebranding with a complete overhaul, makes it look like the change wasn’t that extreme, even though the logos are visually completely different.
Let’s now look at what has changed with the new logo:
- The most noticeable aspect that has changed is the style! Without a doubt, the two logos have two completely different styles. The old logo had thin characters with thin lines throughout the whole logo with a monogram for its symbol – which made the logo to be soft, sleek and elegant. The new logo has bulky characters that make it strong, futuristic and clean.
- Another thing that has changed with the new logo is that we’ve lost the symbol. We basically went back a step and returned to a text based logo, which was a really good fit for us from the beginning. Now, the dot in .net has served as a starting point in the implementation of our visual identity and which can also be recognised in the buttons on our site.
These are the main aspects that have changed in the logo that we can write without repeating ourselves. Another one that was not mentioned in this points, but was already mentioned in this article, is the font change. Going from what is now “Cabo Soft Typeface” to what is currently “Yet Untitled Display“.
Now that we’ve covered the most important points of the rebranding of our logo, let’s see how that has affected our website and what has changed here.
Let’s Talk REBRANDING: Old vs New – Website Edition
Switching gears from logos, let’s dive into our website. The rebranding didn’t stop at the logo – we gave our site a makeover too. We tweaked colors, shuffled layouts, and basically freshened things up. Every click and scroll now reflects our new look. Stick with us as we break down the details of how we revamped Design a Lot’s online space. Ready for a digital tour? Let’s get into it!
About the old website
Let’s start this chapter by talking a bit about the old website. In order for it to match the new visual identity, we’ve had to update it. But still, we felt that it needed a new update, even before the visual identity. We’ve realised that with the old site we’ve slightly over done it and ended up with an unbalanced website that had used a bit too many colours and it became a little too busy and messy. Therefore we’ve decided to do an update that will match the new visual identity, but also fix these mistakes.
Further down you will find a slider where you can compare pages of the old site with their new versions. Move the slider line from left to right to compare it and hit the arrows to switch from one page to the other.
New website, better decisions!
The structure of the old website was good, so we used it as the basis for the new website. But with the new website we’ve made it cleaner, we’ve updated to fit the new visual identity – therefore more bulky, futuristic – and we’ve tried to keep it simple and make everything better overall.
Further down we’ll be covering the fonts used and why those choices, we are going to talk about colours and then go over a few of the pages of the website, which are also presented into the slider mentioned earlier.
Fonts
When it comes to fonts, we went with two typefaces:
- one for headings, titles and main buttons.
- one for general text of the website.
With the one for headings, we chose the typeface called Sofia Sans Condensed (available on Google Fonts) because of it’s soft rounded edges, which we think perfectly match our new logo. And we went with the condensed option to make the titles shorter and because it had a great contrast. But it was quite tough to choose from the all of Sofia Sans widths!
For the general text of the website we went with a typeface called Sen (also available on Google Fonts) because of it’s modern and futuristic style and of how good it looked in long paragraphs. These does a great job in multiple uses around the website, from text, to menu, uppercase details and even small secondary buttons. It’s quite a good typeface, we believe!
Pairing and sticking to these fonts turned out to be a really good decision, in our opinion, as it made the content easier to read, more attractive and made the overall website look cleaner and more professional.
Colours
As mentioned in the logo chapter, we’ve kept the colours from the previous identity for the logo. Well, we’ve done the same for the website: we’ve used the same colours from the logo around the website. What we’ve done with the new website though, is limit the usage of extra colours. In the old website we had used – besides black and red – a couple more colours like green and turquoise. We’ve still kept those within our colour palette, but decided to limit their usage and only have them used in special instances.
Therefore, we’ve stuck with the two main colours throughout the website, which is rich black (#000000 HEX code) and red (#EC2027 HEX code), with shades of them. Well, mostly shades of black, which are basically greys. For example, for the general text we are using a 60% shade of rich black, which turns to be #4C595E in HEX code.
We’ve realised that sticking to these two main colours resulted in a more balanced website, made it more easy on the eyes and even easier to follow. And the use of the other colours from our palette only in special instances, made a really good job in delivering the desired informations. For example, we have used the green colour from our palette to mark the freebies from our shop, which now differentiates them from the rest of the products.
Colours play a big part in a website as well, and we’ve experienced it!
Pages of the website
Let’s now go a bit over some of the pages of the website. For a better understanding of this, we recommend that you go through the slider with the pages that is right above this section. There you will find comparisons between the design of the old pages and the new pages.
Let’s take them one by one.
The design of the Homepage
For the homepage we went from a what seemed like a simple homepage, but was actually quite unbalanced due to the multiple us of colours, fonts and buttons, to a homepage that is modern, clean, interactive and more informative. On the old homepage we used to have a bunch of products in the first part of the page and blog articles right at the bottom. For the new homepage we’ve changed that a bit and made it like this:
- When you enter the homepage, you get a nice message with a simple search bar (which is ajax based and you get instant results) and then you see a carousel with our featured products.
- Next, you get a nice presentation of our design resources, a single product that we try to promote – usually a freebie – and next you get a list of 8 products with the possibility to easily choose between the categories you want to see.
- Next you’ll find a nice presentation of our blog, a promoted design article and a list with 8 more design articles.
- After that, you will see banners for two of our dear side projects: Fonts for Monograms and Mockup Assets.
And that’s it. All with a cleaner design, shorter content while still more informative than the previous homepage and a lot more interactive.
The design of the Shop page
For the shop page we went with a more modern approach, a design that is easier on the eye and has the focus on better presenting the products. We did that by making the product images display bigger and more clear. We’ve also kept to our main colours and got rid of the usage of the extra colours from our palette, which in the homepage we’ve used a bunch.
Even though the old shop page also had a search bar, this one is much cleaner and appealing. It’s same as the one from the homepage, where your searches instantly appear. And the same design of the shop applies to the whole shop archive, and the search bar can be used to search within the category that you are browsing. Pretty neat, right? We though that this might be quite useful for our audience and makes the content easier to be found.
The design of product pages
The product pages also got a redesign. We went from the old design, which we realised was a bit unorganised and messy, to a simpler, cleaner and more modern design that put the focus on the product and offered the most important informations right from the first section of the website.
The overall design of the page got considerably shorter, thanks to the way we’ve group the second part of the page, the one after the gallery and main information. We’ve switched from posting the continuously one after the other, to grouping them in nice tabs that, besides making the page shorter, keeps all of the content in reach and easy to access.
This update of the page has already started showing great results, with increasing orders starting the second day of the update (to be noted that we’ve updated the design on 29th of January, not at the time this article was posted).
The design of the Blog page
For the Blog page we went from a plain design to a more modern and lively look. And, to differentiate the blog from the Shop, we went for a dark background of the header. This applies to blog articles as well, but we’ll talk more about these in the next point.
While still on the Blog page point, in the new design we’ve changed a few other things, beside the dark background. First, we’ve remove that add that we had for our Fonts for Monograms, and kept the first part of the page strictly related to the articles.
For the list of blog articles, we went from infinite loading of new posts – which we had on the old blog page and didn’t think was a good option – to a subtle page navigation that you can use to see the next set of articles.
After the articles we’ve inserted a set of products featuring products that are currently on sale and that our audience might find interesting.
This page became much more modern, enjoyable and easy to follow.
The design of the articles pages
The articles of the blog got a rebranding too, and this is a major change compared to the old version. As mentioned earlier, it follows the style of the blog with a dark background for the header, to differentiate these from the shop and product pages, but here the structure is also changed.
Previously, when you opened an article you had the title and meta data followed by a big featured image. We saw no benefit in keeping that as big as it was, but more, we felt that it hurt the articles. So we made it smaller and moved it to the right of the tile and meta data, but also placed it as a background for the header. This way, you can get to the content pretty fast.
We’ve also got rid of the product placement that was previously right after the featured image and got straight to the content.
On the content we’ve also done some changes. We went from a compacted content with ads on each side to having just small Share buttons on the left side and a wide section for the article content. This way we’ve put the focus on the article, without any distractions.
After the article we’ve placed related articles, a section where you can subscribe to our newsletter and get a Free Design Bundle Pack, followed by a product placement and the comments in the end.
This way everything feels more structured and easy to follow!
Conclusion On Our Rebranding
To sum it up, through our 8 years history we’ve underwent a few identity updates, always with the focus on growing and doing better. Our project started with a simple text logo in January 2016, had a facelift in December 2016, did a big rebrand in 2022 and now we’re at the second big rebrand, in 2024. Even though this we’re visually big rebrands, we’ve kept our brand continuity by keeping main aspects and structures through our evolution, including main colours and the way we write our name.
The rebranding has taken an effect on the website as well, with a make-over that made it more modern, easier to follow and more appealing. We will continue on bringing new updates and making changes that help us grow and evolve. But we wanted to document this rebranding as it has been an interesting experience for us, from which we’ve learned from our mistakes and found ways to grow and improve our brand, which serves as a good case study that we figure our audience could learn for.
If you’ve reached this far, we’d like to thank you for taking the time go through our article! We would love to hear your thoughts on it, so let’s take this to the comments section and further discuss it. We’d love to answer any questions you may have!
