The internet giant, Yahoo, struggled for more than a decade to find a winning strategy. We came in as part of that solution in 2015 to rebrand its online DIY magazine division headed by the editor-in-chief, Katie Brown.
My job was to create the brand guide for the Yahoo DIY magazine, which not only included specific algorithms, but typography families, color palettes, graphic design, and original content to go along with those design elements. We were to function as an internal design and production studio inside Yahoo’s walls, of which I was the lead on in both strategy and execution. The immense size of Yahoo required strict analytics on the followers, clicks, users, and statistics to track improvement, so creating branding that simply “looked cool” was not an option. The branding needed to translate directly into numbers that the shareholders could track.
My role was to breathe life into an otherwise stale brand in order to connect with a new audience, specifically with a millennial audience that Yahoo had lost for quite some time. I wanted to do this through human-centered design in order to keep the brand current, as well as boost the site’s visitors, sponsorships, and revenue.
