Behind the Scenes of the Goal Digger Podcast Rebrand
Jenna Kutcher is a master marketer. She has a devoted Instagram following (over 730k!), she runs three successful online courses, and her podcast, the Goal Digger Podcast, is consistently at the top of the podcast charts and has well over 10 million downloads on iTunes alone. The podcast is an incredible wealth of information and interviews – but has evolved quite a bit over the course of the past two years and 219 episodes.
If you listen to the podcast or follow her on social media, you know that Jenna is about as upbeat, encouraging, and open as they come. We have become conditioned to believe that nothing is really as it seems online, and to be honest it’s easy to assume that we are getting a falsified impression of someone’s personality, especially when they are an influencer with an enormous following. I just wanted to make a quick mention of the fact that Jenna is truly one of the most genuinely kind and thoughtful people I have ever met. She is one of the good ones, folks!
I began working with the Jenna Kutcher team in December of 2017 and the months have absolutely flown by. In that time I have designed all of the podcast graphics and hundreds of ads to promote the Pinterest, Instagram, and Photo Labs.
Backstory:
Jenna has well-established visual branding that has guided everything we have done in the past. But when fall rolled around this year, knowing that she would be out on maternity leave come December, we started to talk about some of the challenges that we were facing – starting to feel as though things were getting a little repetitive and stale, and also noticing a lot of podcasts popping up who had tapped into a similar aesthetic. So, we landed on the following objective:
Objective:
- Kick off 2019 with a new look for the Goal Digger Podcast
- Visuals that are fun, quirky, and feel like you’re talking to a friend
- Vibrant and memorable
- Feels like the “next step” for the podcast
- Expands on existing brand elements and colors
Process:
The first step in my process was to do an audit of everything that was currently being shared for each episode (blog, social, etc.) to determine what was and was not working. Outside of Jenna being a client, I am an avid listener of the podcast so I was very familiar with the tone and feel of the content. I took some time to jot down words and notes about how the podcast feels and what I felt a next step would be. This is really mostly for me to get in a creative and forward-thinking mindset.
Color:
After the visual audit, I moved on to creating the color palette. We needed to work with the pale pink and blue that Jenna uses in her primary branding, and I knew that I wanted to create a concept that featured a pretty wide variety of colors. Jenna’s podcast and community feel a bit like one big optimistic and supportive girl boss party, and I wanted the overall aesthetic to reflect that. I made a mood board of the many images that I use of Jenna, and started to look for some visual trends – what colors were popping up consistently, what colors were missing, what images felt the most energetic. I pretty quickly started to see the color palette in my mind – this is kind of a weird designer thing, but I honestly “see” color palettes for most of my clients. For inspiration I love to pull photographs or look at a few older design books I keep in my studio. I try hard to stay off of Pinterest for inspiration, but that’s a conversation for another day!
Typography:
Hand drawn components are a pretty signature element for Jenna’s aesthetic and are used consistently across her website, but I had a strong sense that I wanted to explore a serif typeface to ground and complement the colors that were coming together. The new typeface feels like a natural progression for the podcast, which is full of legitimate, real-world business advice from women who have paved their way in a wide variety of industries. This is serious stuff – but presented in a fun and relatable style. I made an initial selection and we tested about four other typefaces before landing back on the original choice. We did keep a few smaller hand drawn elements woven in for episode titles. Jenna hand-drew these and passed them along to me for implementation.
Templates:
After the logo and color palette were complete I began work on a general concept and applied it to a small number of assets. In the first round of edits we refined the pattern from being a little too abstract and landed on the confetti style that we see today. After getting approval on the pattern, I built out the entire package to include the 8 assets that we use on a weekly basis for each podcast episode. There have been several small tweaks since then, making swaps for audio files and figuring out the best system for Jenna’s podcast manager to prep and share the graphics.
Outcome:
I am thrilled with how this project came together – there were many hands in the process, as we gathered feedback from Jenna’s team and that shaped the revisions as we moved through different design rounds. Ultimately I think we met our objectives and were able to kick off 2019 by re-introducing Jenna Kutcher fans and followers to the next chapter of the Goal Digger Podcast. As always I am so grateful for the opportunity to do this work every day, and to be a small part of a podcast that is changing the lives of entrepreneurs across the country and world. Cheers to a new look!
"Olivia is a unicorn in the design world – there, I said it. After feeling like our podcast visuals were looking a little flat, I wanted to refresh and start the new year with some color and personality. Olivia nailed the design, suggested edits, took on revisions and delivered the perfect finished product. Olivia has been an integral part of our team and we are so thankful that she has helped us breathe new life into our content." - Jenna Kutcher
