Rebuilding the house while everyone's still living in it
Rebrand a leading digital media brand for modern parents. Fatherly had built a real audience and a real identity since launching in 2015. It just needed to grow up. The editorial was strong. The visual system wasn't keeping pace.
My role: lead a full rebrand (logo refinement, web design, typography, color system, photography direction, social assets, editorial design) while honoring what the original team had built.
Fatherly was acquired by BDG in 2021. The rebrand supported growth to new audience heights. Growth the editor-in-chief attributed to stronger editorial focus, SEO, social strategy, and a brand that finally looked the part. The expanded system supported numerous extensions beyond the core site.
The Brand: Typography, Color, Identity
The existing Fatherly logo had energy. We weren't throwing it out. We were refining it. Making it more intentional. Building a system around it that could actually scale.
Typography became the backbone of the new system. We landed on a three-level hierarchy: Frank Ruhl Libre Black for the primary headline, a typeface with real editorial weight. GT America Compressed Black and GT America Condensed Bold handled the secondary headline work and eyebrow labels, giving us range from bold feature moments to the more utility-driven UI copy.
The existing Fatherly logo had energy. We weren't throwing it out. We were refining it. Making it more intentional. Building a system around it that could actually scale.
Photography: From Illustration-First to Image-Led
Fatherly had built its visual identity largely around illustration. It worked. It gave the brand a consistent look and a lot of creative flexibility. But as the brand grew, illustration alone wasn't carrying the weight. It was starting to feel like a workaround rather than a choice.
The first thing we tackled was defining what Fatherly photography actually looked like. Not stock. Not aspirational in a way that felt out of reach. Real, imperfect, humorous, spontaneous. Dads who look like dads.
For cover shoots, we developed two distinct approaches: studio and location. Studio gave us control and the ability to push conceptually. Location gave us warmth and context. Both had to feel like Fatherly, never like they wandered in from a different publication.
We built out a picture research framework across two key categories: Community Life/Life at Home, and Light-Hearted/Spontaneous. The distinction mattered. The first was about grounded, documentary-style moments: the quiet ones, the ones that happen in kitchens and backyards and car seats. The second was about embracing the chaos of it. Kids covered in dirt. Dads in bounce houses. The absurd everyday moments.
Web Design: Making the Editorial Work Harder
The site redesign was about one thing: the content deserved better. Fatherly publishes genuinely good journalism (health, science, parenting, relationships) and the layout wasn't surfacing it the way it should.
We rebuilt the homepage with a clearer hierarchy. Strong featured moments for cover stories. Organized sections for editorial verticals. A design system flexible enough to handle the range of content types, from quick gear roundups to long-form features, without everything looking the same.
Headline card variants gave editors real options without creating chaos. Each version had a purpose: some led with photography, some leaned on typography and color blocks, some were built for sponsored content. The system had rules, but it wasn't rigid.
Illustration & Social: Systematizing What Worked
We kept illustration. We just gave it more structure.
The existing approach was loose. What we built was a defined taxonomy of styles, each with a specific editorial purpose: Photo Surrealism for conceptual, mind-bending story art. Surreal Scale for collage-driven pieces where the juxtaposition is the idea. Layered Photography for celebrity features, creating a dynamic, multi-exposure effect. Graphic Minimalism for cleaner, more restrained pieces where the image serves the text.
Applied across the site (feature stories, gear sections, celebrity profiles, fitness content) the system gave editors and art directors a shared language. You could brief an illustrator or a photo editor using the same vocabulary. That consistency is what makes a brand feel coherent as we began to build it out.
Social assets are where brand systems either hold together or fall apart. We built out two core formats: quote cards and cover-style story promotions. The quote cards ran across five color variants drawn from the brand palette, each one immediately readable as Fatherly without needing the logo to do all the work. Article promo assets without photography got their own treatment: collage-style illustration work that kept the visual interest high even when there wasn't a strong image to pull from. These weren't afterthoughts. They were built with the same care as the editorial design because for a lot of readers, social is the first (and sometimes only) touchpoint.
Applied across the site (feature stories, gear sections, celebrity profiles, fitness content) the system gave editors and art directors a shared language.
Results
The rebrand helped take Fatherly to new audience heights under BDG. The editor-in-chief attributed the growth to a combination of stronger editorial focus, SEO, social strategy, and a brand that finally looked the part. The expanded brand system supported numerous extensions beyond the core site.
The work also proved something that matters to me on any rebrand: you can honor what came before while still pushing it significantly forward. The original team built something great. Our job was to take it further, and eventually, they could see that too.
That last part might be the result I'm most proud of.
