“Every tiny detail is intentional.” DIA unpacks the intricate process behind Flodesk’s rebrand

There’s a sense of softness and fluidity to Flodesk’s new look. When seen in motion, at first glance, the way the brand moves might remind one of the ways of water – soft shapes transform into angular ones, filling up screens in swift, silken transitions. The rebrand of the popular email marketing platform, which took a year to polish, was led by NYC and Chamonix-based DIA Studio, in close collaboration with Flodesk. The complex process that paved the way to the new brand world was steered by many considerations, at the heart of which lay the community of small businesses that use Flodesk to catapult their passion to newer audiences and heights. To decode the many strands of thoughts that often tangle together in a project of this scale, we spoke to Mitch Paone, Partner & Creative Director at DIA Studio, and Rebecca Shostak, Co-Founder & Chief Brand Officer at Flodesk. Together, they take us behind the scenes, and let us into the details – that of the making of a custom typeface that now carries the new brand on its shoulders, the importance of minimalism and the work of Richard Neutra, and how the best ideas were sparked over bottomless pots of fondue.

RB Hello, Mitch and Rebecca. Congratulations on the striking rebrand of Flodesk! How does it feel to see the year-long collaboration finally out in the world?

MP So much hard work and detail went into the project, so it feels great to see it live in the world. It’s rare to have such an open and collaborative client partner like Flodesk. Our productive Slack chats and Geneva Fondue sessions will be missed.

RB Rebecca, why did you choose to work with DIA Studio for the rebrand?

RS I felt strongly that if we were going to spend the time, money, and effort to refresh our visual identity (and have it last for many years to come), we needed an outside perspective to help us sharpen and articulate who we are at our core, then express it in an original and rigorous visual system.

A high bar, right? That’s why, in my mind, DIA was the only partner for this project. What makes DIA stand out as a top modern branding firm is how they apply rich historical design foundations into a dynamic and screen-based world – exactly what Flodesk needed.

On top of that, the firm’s co-founder, Mitch Paone, was not just a longtime friend of mine (going back over a decade), but also someone I shared a deep alignment with around brand, design, and philosophy. This foundational trust made the decision easy.

RB Tell us about your collaborative synergy through the project. Did you conduct initial workshops to chart a conceptual direction for the rebrand?

MP Rebecca and I go way back! We met in 2008 when we launched the first DIA website that was developed by one of the world’s most creative minds, Josh Nimoy, who was a close friend of Rebecca. We connected informally then about our love for music and design, which makes me think the seed for this collaboration was planted long before Flodesk existed. We reconnected at OFFF Barcelona in May 2022 and met over coffee with Claudia Aran, Flodesk’s Design Director, and discussed a potential roadmap for the project.

Like all of our branding projects, we provided Flodesk with an extensive questionnaire that tries to uncover as much information on the brand from all angles. The answers are discussed and debated over several meetings and refined into a clear brand and design strategy for the project. Luckily, by this time, COVID had subsided, so the Flodesk team flew out to Geneva for a two-day in-person workshop where we dialled in strategy and refined design concepts over heaps of fondue and chartreuse!

RS Mitch nailed it in his answer. And I have to reiterate – the fondue. It was all about the fondue.

Clean design doesn’t just look beautiful – it can actually improve your health.

RB Rebecca, for the rebrand, Flodesk revisited one of its early inspirations – the work of Austrian-American architect Richard Neutra. Was it important for this inspiration to seep into the design of the brand system?

RS The part of Neutra’s work that I consider most influential to the Flodesk experience is his philosophy that minimal, clean design doesn’t just look beautiful – it can actually improve your health. That’s both radical and inspiring.

This core philosophy has been critical to our mission of creating an email marketing platform that takes something that used to feel so stressful and full of friction (email marketing) and turns it into a delight. Our hope is that you feel energetically cleaner after using it. You feel healthier.

Since this was such an important guiding principle when we built the platform, it was only natural that the visual identity, just like every other part of the Flodesk experience, should be rooted in this core philosophy – down to the typography, shapes, and colours. Now that the visual identity is philosophically aligned with the guiding principles of the software experience, the whole Flodesk ‘universe’ feels tighter. A consistent experience.

RB Mitch, from the very outset, how did you ensure that the refreshed identity and the brand system reflect the spirit and vision of Flodesk?

MP It all comes down to a very clear brand and design strategy. We had a rich understanding of the goals of Flodesk and, more importantly, the Flodesk community. For lack of a better term, it’s really about turning a company’s vision into a ‘vibe,’ which, for DIA, means drawing upon design, type and art history to align strategic points into an aesthetic vision. Specifically for Flodesk – as Rebecca just pointed out – ideas around how design can nourish and support a community were at the forefront. This led us to the work of Richard Neutra, where modernist functionality is combined with a relaxed Californian vibe – which is often referred to as California Modernism. Beyond Neutra, there is an evident influence from other (predominantly mid-century) designers and architects that helped develop our design strategy – Adolf Loos, Anni and Josef Albers, Finn Juhl, Ellsworth Kelly, Hella Jongerius.... There was quite a rich palette of form and colour inspiration to draw upon to evoke the Flodesk vibe! One crucial point was to make sure the design system felt fresh and timeless, and not overly tied to its mid-century references.

RB How did you define the way the brand should move and ‘flow’?

MP A lot of trial and error! The Flodesk motion system is one of the more complex ones that DIA has produced. The foundation of the motion is working out a smooth transition from a square to a circle. Getting that corner curvature to flow smoothly and responsively to all aspect ratios was very difficult technically; the subtleness of that transition is what makes it so beautiful.

Conceptually, the square/hard edge represents the design aspect of Flodesk, and the circle/organic edge represents the Flodesk Community. The movement back and forth was the basis for the motion behaviour, and served as the development for the entire shape system and image containers.

Every tiny detail in the work is intentional.

RB Mitch, there’s a certain sense of ‘softness’ in the visual language – from the organic forms of the shape library, to the way motion moves through the system. Was this an attribute that was consciously built into the design?

MP Absolutely! Every tiny detail in the work is intentional. It was strategically important that the Flodesk identity didn’t fall in line with the bombastic Tik-Tok-ified identities we have seen lately.

The work is a detailed look at the foundational brand elements under a microscope – type design, typography, colour, and content framing. The brand’s minimalism forces it to speak without decoration, making every element functional in the system. Combining these elements leaves a subtle, soft, inviting impression, much like the interior of a Richard Neutra home, which was at the core of our design strategy.

The brand’s minimalism forces it to speak without decoration.

RB Rebecca, when it came to the colour palette, did you already have an idea of the tonal direction?

RS I’ve always thought of the Flodesk brand as one might think of a modern art museum – whisper-quiet, clean white walls with small greyscale captions that allow the artwork in the museum to take centre stage (the artwork, in our case, being the emails and design creations our customers create in the platform). The more our brand becomes a minimal container or gallery, the more the brands of our small business customers stand out.

Because so much of what we do at Flodesk is about putting our customers – and their brands – front and centre in anything we do, I was more concerned about whether the colour palettes we chose would fit well with the small business community’s aesthetic than the Flodesk team’s personal preference.

In my mind, what feels most ‘Flodesk’ is more of a reflection and interpretation of the tens of thousands of brands we serve, than any preconceived notion of what Flodesk should look like. Put another way, the small business community has an aesthetic zeitgeist across social media, websites, physical events – and we needed colours that fit well in that world.

I felt that the palette we eventually chose fits beautifully into our community while still being distinctly ‘Flodesk.’

RB Mitch, how did you ensure that the elements of motion and the overarching character of the design system informed both the way the brand communicates with the world and the product itself?

MP First and foremost, the Flodesk Sans works seamlessly in all the brand applications which makes all the touchpoints visually consistent. Secondly, due to the minimalist approach, there is rigorous attention to detail in the typography across the entire system. Intentional combinations of the sans and serif, use of indentation, responsive grid systems are all baked in. Motion is more present in brand and marketing communications; however, there are some subtle details in the product with transitions and loaders that carry the same behaviour.

RB At first glance, what qualities or ideas do you hope the rebranded world of Flodesk communicates with its customers?

MP Design savvy, trust, and comfort.

RS From the bottom of my heart, I hope the brand encourages all small business owners to find their creativity, express themselves boldly, and feel inspired to share what they have with the world. That is, after all, the core of Flodesk’s mission and the reason we do what we do.

DIA Studio

Flodesk