Brand Design for Gloria Niemi
If you love dreamy, nature-inspired aesthetics, then you're going to love this week's brand reveal.
Gloria Niemi is a Postpartum Life Coach on a mission to help each mom love motherhood, feel like her true self, and be happy again. As a mom of six young children, she has struggled with postpartum depression after each birth so she understands firsthand what moms are going through and knows it's possible to truly love and be happy in motherhood.
After several years of DIY-ing her brand, Gloria was ready to show up in a bigger way and have her brand reflect the compassionate space she holds for moms during a difficult period of their life. Come see the behind-the-scenes of this latest reveal!
1 | Brand Strategy
Known for her instagram handle @operationhappymom, it's no surprise that our brand keywords are happy, embracing, healing. She wanted her brand to feel like a big, warm hug of support and a deep breath of possibility. We were very mindful that although postpartum depression is a serious, often heavy topic, we wanted her brand to feel lighter without being insensitive or dismissive of struggling moms.
While Gloria's color palette is, of course, in line with her strategy, she also already had beautiful brand photography by her sister-in-law. Thankfully her strategy and photos were so congruent that we were able to choose colors that complemented both. The muted teal is calm, healing, and trustworthy while the soft peach is compassionate, nurturing, and warm. She was a bit hesitant to use peach until she realized that she already was—from the skin tones in her sweet family photos to the warm skies and nature scenes. Photography is a natural way to incorporate a complimentary color into your brand without it stealing the show.
2 | Logo Design
In the same way that a colon and parentheses symbolizes a smiley face in typed communication, open and closed parentheses together symbolize hugging, a perfect metaphor for Gloria's coaching practice. We pushed the symbolism a tad by using curvy brackets to communicate the same embracing support she gives to moms. This allowed us to infuse more personality and provided more interesting shapes to integrate into her other collateral pieces.
Her logo revisions also went from a heavier, thicker first draft to a much thinner final version to keep a lighter, happier vibe. Because we chose to have a type-only logo with no icon, I made sure the font choices were interesting, customizing some of the tiniest letter details to ensure it's totally unique to her. I love how her fonts feel totally feminine without resorting to typical script styles as in her old logo, and the lower case "g" made both of us super happy! What's not to love about that fun, quirky shape?
3 | Brand Board
The logo and additional pieces come together in the Brand Board where we round out the brand with fonts and custom patterns.
4 | COLLATERAL & SOCIAL MEDIA
As usual, I created a suite of files in Canva so Gloria can easily, consistently publish new content. We updated her newsletter banner—her primary communication tool—and designed a complementary podcast logo with cover and episode images for her upcoming launch, Be Happy Again. You can see how we incorporated her pattern and bracket graphic here.
“Working through the branding process with Michelle was so clarifying—it felt like a stake in the ground, saying this is who I am and what my business stands for. Having her insight made my vision so much clearer, and it was way better than trying to do it alone as I had in the past.
Having a cohesive brand has created an internal shift for me. Now my business feels like a living, breathing thing doing even more amazing work in the world. I can talk about my work in a steadier, more confident way thanks to her down-to-earth, loving presence.
I loved connecting on our check-in calls and, as she patiently answered all my questions, I knew I could trust her and she wouldn't leave me in the dark. Thank you, Michelle! I love the final result. It's like a big, warm, open embrace—exactly what I wanted!”
– Gloria Niemi, Postpartum Life Coach, glorianiemi.com
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