Yesterday, we flipped the switch on something we’ve been working on behind the scenes for quite some time now: the completely redesigned, reinvented Pond5. As part of our commitment to promoting and enabling creativity, our mission to innovate within our industry leads us to constantly think about and work toward new solutions for artists and creators worldwide.
With offices in NYC, Prague, and Dublin, Pond5 is a true global brand, which means anything we develop has to be versatile enough to adapt to many different types of creators. Along with launching and continuing to develop forward-thinking products and features, we challenged ourselves with creating a sophisticated new brand wrapper — one that could convey our story while also enabling better customer experience through clear communication design. Here’s how we did it.
The New Wordmark Logo
We wanted the characteristics of our new typeface to evoke the feeling of our bold and pioneering heritage, without being inaccessible or seeming inauthentic. Starting with typesets that were clean and extremely legible, we explored different approaches, being quickly drawn to the boldness of the font we eventually landed on. We crafted the spacing within each character for uniformity, consistently carrying it through the custom typeset.
The “Quartz”
From the beginning of our process, we knew we wanted an iconographic element that could inform and activate our diverse collection of assets. The new “Quartz” was developed from a 16:9 rectangle (signifying video, our leading collection asset) separated into thirds, which creates the “P” shape above.
Through further iteration and exploration, we started using animated angles of the Quartz to mask our content, giving the images a unique and dynamic feel.
Brand Colors
Choosing a limited palette allows our vibrant content to always be the focus. Leaning more heavily on a neutral set of black and white, blue has remained one of our most prominent brand colors. Meanwhile, the introduction of pink and yellow give us a more fun, fresh look, and allow us to diversify when designing for user experience.
Fonts
Droid Serif and Open Sans give the new Pond5 a slightly editorial feel while also providing access to a full-range of international characters.
Iconography
The main staple of our product experience is the licensing of a diverse range of creative assets, so to best express these asset types, we developed a clean, simple icon set that uses a stylistic line approach, much like the Quartz itself.
Putting it all together
When you start the process of re-branding it can be quite the daunting task. There’s so much nuance and subjectivity in the process that moving forward can at times seem impossible. But we persevered and landed on a system that works for us, and we’re sure will work for you too. At the end of the day, it’s all part of creating an experience that extends throughout Pond5 — from the way you interact with our site, to our approach to artist relations, customer service, sales, marketing, and above all, enriching creativity.
Check it all working in tandem on Pond5.com.