The brand new Glassdoor brand has an ingenious design secret By Joseph Foley printed 20 July 23 It takes a second to note.

The world loves a brand with a hidden secret, and the brand new brand design for the recruitment website Glassdoor matches the invoice. Even when at first look it would appear to be it is a mistake. 

The brand new brand appears like a easy type-based design with the corporate title set between single citation marks in reference to how its website permits staff to fee their employers in critiques. The opening citation mark seems to be the unsuitable means round… however it’s no mistake (see our decide of the worst design fails for that).

The rationale for the design resolution turns into clear within the accompanying new animated brand and the diminished model of the brand, the latter of which serves an icon for Glassdoor’s new app. There we see that once they’re introduced collectively, the citation marks are a lowercase ‘g’ and ‘d’, representing the initials of the model’s title.

The rebrand is the work of the artistic studio Koto, which additionally created the brand new brand for the e-commerce firm Bolt. The ‘g/d’ citation marks can be utilized to flank different textual content in addition to the wordmark, with textual content showing in a customized sans serif, Glassdoor Sans, designed by Giulia Boggio. Koto says the typeface options quirky traits impressed by workplace vernacular.

The animated model of the logotype slides open as a reference to Glassdoor’s title. In the meantime, the broader branding system features a library of playful icons illustrated by Josep Puy. Designed for product and advertising, they revolve across the model’s themes of dialog, range, anonymity and collaboration. The icons characteristic deliberately lacking pixels, supposed to symbolise transparency and openness.

Koto says that through the undertaking it “embraced an inclusive design course of”. After every presentation, Koto curated a “Glassdoor Open Design” discussion board to encourage discussions and obtain suggestions from Glassdoor staff and members of the design neighborhood.

“Our work with Glassdoor was targeted on making a holistic model that exudes confidence and open-mindedness, amplifying customers’ voices by clear conversations and actual office insights,” Koto artistic director Deanna German says. “We wished to signify the evolution of Glassdoor from being a vacation spot for insights, to a thriving neighborhood for actual office conversations.”