Business Insider Rebrand
Leading a major digital media rebrand with bold evolution and measured precision
Business Insider underwent a major rebrand to refresh its identity, unify cross-platform experiences, and reconnect with its audience. The UXD team translated a visually rich Brand Book into scalable designs for web, app, and email. With strong leadership input and constraints on the existing site structure, I balanced bold visual updates with usability, accessibility, and technical feasibility.
Samples from the new Brand Book
I led the team in transforming the Brand Book into a scalable digital system - refining layouts, typography, and interactions so the new identity felt modern and cohesive across platforms. By balancing bold visual change with continuity of user flows, we delivered a rebrand that energized the product without disrupting the reader experience.
In early discovery, I worked alongside four UXD teammates to explore the new brand system. We tested a spectrum of concepts, from bold reinventions to transitional designs that bridged old and new, conducting rapid reviews to iterate and identify promising directions. I helped curate which designs to share with stakeholders, ensuring their feedback translated into clear guidance for the team.
Collection of early stage designs for a variety of page features and templates.
From these explorations, two clear directions emerged:
Bold and Blue - a high-impact, vibrant approach
Elevated Grid Lines - a refined, elegant interpretation
Both leaned on the new brand foundations outlined in the Brand Book.
Concept 1: Bold and Blue
Concept 2: Elevated Grid Lines
Stakeholder feedback was pivotal. I translated their input into clear, actionable guidance for the team - refining where to push boldness, where to hold back, and how to weave the strongest elements from both concepts into a unified approach. This process led to a set of guiding design principles and our creative north star: a design vision that balanced bold evolution with trusted familiarity, keeping every decision aligned as we moved forward.
Working with product managers, I prioritized templates for rollout based on business goals and development capacity. I organized the team to design in parallel, each focusing on key layouts like homepage, article, and landing templates, while maintaining cohesion through weekly critiques and shared documentation.
As part of the rollout, I led efforts to translate the new brand into a scalable, cross-platform design system, laying the foundation for consistent implementation across web, app, and email. I built and maintained centralized Figma libraries to drive visual consistency, streamline workflows, and support cross-team adoption.
See the case study for the design system project here
Screens from the BI Design System
We successfully launched the rebrand across all major digital platforms without disruption to user experience or content delivery. Along with maintaining the site’s core page structure, we increased the number of stories that could be displayed and curated, and added a new “Featured Authors” section. These improvements gave editors more flexibility and readers faster access to top stories.
Old homepage structure: 13 curatable stories, 5 Most Popular stories, 3 video thumbnails
New homepage structure: 16 curatable stories, 8 Most Popular stories, new featured Authors section, 10+ vertical video carousel
This rebrand proved that successful digital brand translation demands adaptability, audience focus, and cross-functional diplomacy. Even with creative constraints, from legacy architecture to varied stakeholder perspectives, anchoring every decision to user needs and scalability allowed us to deliver a polished, future-proof result.