Art request - Newsletter branding refresh

[lottiecoxon]

Newsletter brand refresh

My reasoning:

• Our use of MatterSQ font is kinda outdated
• The SwoleHog isn't really used for anything anymore aside from the logo of the newsletter
• All the artwork for the newsletter is the normal sized PostHog hedgehog so theres a lack of consistency

Deadline & Priority

Q1 sometime?

Technical requirements

Logo, font, theme, icons, how substack looks and how newsletter articles are shared/presented.

Questions

• can we kill redo/replace the swolehog logo?
• do we want to keep the same tagline about flexing muscles?
• if so what will the new tagline be?
• How do you want the newsletters vibe to be visually?
• if you could change anything what would it be?

Potential ideas

• Tattoo concept (developing from product heart tattoo on swole hog)

Tagging @ivanagas to discuss - also have a thread going on in the team editorial slack

[lottiecoxon]

Substacks that do design well (from my quick 5 min search)

• Pablo Stanley Clean strong font, monochrome sketchy comic book like hero images

• Design Lobster Has a simple BUT ANIMATED logo - fun?

• Why Design is hard I like the scrappy almost edited casual feel of the logo - maybe we do something similar but in code? Unsure

• Offbrand by KOTO I like the garishness and the interesting use of bright colours and interesting fonts here - this is why I think the tattoo influence here could add some edge for us

[ivanagas]

Answering questions

• Yes, we can kill swolehog RIP, I have been using him less and less.
• No, we don't need to keep the flexing muscles tagline, I also haven't been using it very much, as we've been writing a bunch about things beyond just "product" (like company culture) and engineers (for founders).
• Not sure yet what a new tagline might be...

Wishlist

• Right now our visual identity is the same as PostHog, I would love a visual identity that is similar, but not the same. Looking at a bunch of newsletters, they have some bold color that is distinctly their's for that newsletter.

• Our aspiration for this year is to move away from Substack towards posthog.com (AKA the website) as the primary home of the newsletter. This means moving towards Beehiiv as the backend which enables more customization. This also means that anything we do with design has to be re-creatable on the website.

• I also expect we will have multiple series, if not multiple newsletters. A "series" is one of my goals. It would be cool to have some way of making these graphically distinct and connected.

• Social is the primary way to promote the newsletter and most newsletter graphics will get reused there. How do we make all graphics we create more sharable and distinct when shared? We've been adding the callbacks ("Product for Engineers -> newsletter.posthog.com`), but they use the swolehog so we should do something else.

• An ornamental, graphic divider image we can use instead of the default <hr> line like:

Inspo

My favorite newsletters (but neither are on Substack):

• Robin Sloan: Title font, orange color, graphic dividers, font, public commons images.
• Craig Mod: Slight variation between different newsletter lists, font, lots of photos.

Some more good ones:

• ByteByteGo: Graphics for social media (they crush)
• FeedMe: Best logo, formatted section images
• Growth Unhinged: Graphics for social (mostly just they are well researched and look good enough)
• PirateWires: Somehow got a deal with Substack to have a completely custom site, crazy aggressive meme graphics, distinct image style, wordmark, multiple newsletters.
• Refactoring: Most consistent brand of newsletters, consistent graphic colors, good icon logo, emoji usage.
• a16z: Font, charts, multiple newsletters
• mkt1: Graphics with bold colors
• Intrinsic Perspective: Hero images

[ivanagas]

Also relevant, we are doing Product for Engineer events, we want the update branding there too: #14205