The New Glassdoor
A refreshed brand and illustration system for Glassdoor
Client
Glassdoor
Role
Agency selection, creative review, rollout
Team
Creative director, art directors, brand designers, product marketing, Koto (agency)
Timeline
18 months · 2022–2023
Partners
Koto (agency), Josep Puy (illustration), Giulia Boggio and TYPE01 (type design)
Overview
In 2022, Glassdoor set out to rebrand for the first time since its 2008 launch. Two earlier attempts had been called off, and this one had to carry a bigger change: a product moving from salary lookups to everyday workplace conversation. I helped write the brief, benchmark brands and choose Koto from more than 30 agencies, then reviewed their work as the system took shape.
16x
organic social views
2.7x
social engagements
10.5%
record LinkedIn engagement rate
Organic social (LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok), July–December 2023 vs. the same months of 2022, from the social team’s annual report. A team result, not mine alone. Posting nearly doubled and one viral video drove much of the reach. Brand perception was measured before launch, but no follow-up study has turned up, so these numbers show attention, not proof that the repositioning worked.
Illustrations: Josep Puy · Brand identity: Koto
01
Problem
Glassdoor was asking people to talk about work every day, but its brand still said “check a salary every two years,” and two earlier attempts to change that had been called off.
The 2023 launch briefs said it plainly: a 2008 disruptor, now one of many, seen as corporate and not fun.
Fewer people were considering Glassdoor. The brand tracker (Feb 2023, 1,262 US adults) found it well known and trusted, with 74% aided awareness, but consideration had fallen from 39% to 28% since October 2021. Part of that was a cooling job market that hit every job platform.
Two earlier attempts had died. The draft RFP notes that refreshes were called off in 2019 and 2020, and the brand team had run a post-mortem on them.
A new product needed a new brand. The relaunch (“The New Glassdoor”) added community conversations, with Fishbowl’s audience folded in. The brand promise moved to being the place for workplace conversations.
The mandate, from the agency deck: keep the name but change the wordmark and icon; differentiate from Indeed and LinkedIn; flex across consumer and employer surfaces; let the product experience carry the brand; bring real diversity to the work.
The old logo didn’t work well in product based on feedback from product design leadership
Fishbowl users were wary. Nov 2021 research (635 users) found anonymity was the core value and some users distrusted the merger.
02
Making the new brand work everywhere
The refresh ran in four phases over 18 months:
Discover (early 2022). I wrote the benchmarks deck that framed the work for the Brand Advisory Group.
Select (Jan–Jul 2022). We narrowed more than 30 agencies to four finalists and chose Koto. I was part of the evaluation team.
Shape (late 2022–Feb 2023). Koto developed strategy, identity and an illustration library with Josep Puy. I reviewed each round.
Ship (Feb–Jul 2023). I owned the employer site rollout and rebuilt our marketing icons before the July launch.
What guided my work
Design for longevity, not trends. A brand identity has to last five to ten years. My benchmarks deck studied brands like Mailchimp, Intercom and Robinhood, and asked a simple question: how can Glassdoor feel of the moment and still be evergreen? That framing became a test we applied to every route Koto showed us.
Push the illustrations toward clarity and range. The illustration library had to carry onboarding, empty states and errors, not just marketing. In review I focused on whether each scene read at a glance, and whether it represented the people who use Glassdoor. I flagged actions that didn’t land, a locked community icon that read as “criminal” instead of “protected,” and scenes that needed more variety in gender, race and body type.
Build the system to outlast the launch. Agencies hand over guidelines; teams have to live with them. I rebuilt our library of roughly 80 marketing icons on Koto’s grid, redrawing each one at 76, 96 and 128px rather than scaling, and wrote a style guide so new icons could be added without the agency.
Benchmark: Mailchimp
From the benchmarks deck I wrote for the Brand Advisory Group in early 2022. We studied how brands like Mailchimp, Intercom and Robinhood use logos, color, type, illustration and product UI to stand apart, and asked one question: how might Glassdoor be both of the moment and evergreen?
Illustration: Josep Puy · Animation: Koto
The finished illustration library. In review I pushed for more range in gender, race and body type, so scenes like this one reflect the people who use Glassdoor.
Design and animation: Koto
Koto’s wordmark and icons share one construction grid. After launch I extended the icon grid into a library of roughly 80 production icons.
Design and animation: Koto
Koto’s product concepts put the brand inside the app itself: onboarding, company pages and reactions on posts.
03
Outcome
The new Glassdoor launched on July 18, 2023. It was the company’s first rebrand in its 15-year history, timed with what Glassdoor called the biggest change to its product since 2008.
The launch got people talking. Organic social views grew 16x in the six months after launch, compared with the same period in 2022 (125K to nearly 2M). The team posted almost twice as often, and one breakout video in October drove more than half of those views. The other five months on their own still came to about 6x. Engagements grew 2.7x, engagement rate more than doubled (2.4% to 5.3%), and LinkedIn hit its highest engagement rate ever, 10.5%, in December.
The community launch grew with it. The rebrand shipped alongside Glassdoor’s new community features, so these numbers belong to both. US web users grew 20% within about a month of launch, and community members grew from 3.9 million in January 2023 to 19 million a year later, across more than 40,000 communities. Figures from Koto’s Cannes Lions 2024 entry, data provided by Glassdoor.
The design press covered it. It’s Nice That, Design Week, Creative Boom, PRINT and Transform all wrote about the launch.
The system outlasted the launch. Three years later the identity still carries Glassdoor’s flagship programs. Best Places to Work and Best CEOs are built on it, and the icon library I rebuilt is still in production.
Design: Koto
04
What I learned
Measure what you’re trying to change. The refresh set out to move Glassdoor from a place you check salaries to a community you return to. We measured brand perception a few months before launch, but I haven’t found a follow-up study after it. The launch numbers show attention and growth. They can’t show whether people’s view of Glassdoor shifted. Next time I’d make sure the follow-up wave is planned and funded before launch, measuring the specific attributes we were trying to move.
The agency’s last day is the system’s first. Koto’s guidelines were the start. The real test came afterward, when the system had to stretch to icons, campaigns and sub-brands the agency never designed for. That’s the work I’m proudest of.
