Brand Identity

ScoutLocal Brand & Logo Redesign

I suggested a logo redesign because both the old logo and the new version from the marketing agency weren’t working. The old logo felt outdated, and the agency’s version looked too similar to Airbnb’s logo. I saw an opportunity to explore a fresh brand mark and color palette that would better support ScoutLocal’s future homepage redesign.

Timeline

The logo research, strategy, exploration, sketching, design variations, color palette testing, and final decision all happened within one week while I was also working on the homepage redesign strategy.

Team & Role

We were a small startup team. I handled most design work, the founder guided product direction, and team memebers reviewed concepts. We supported each other and made decisions quickly.

Responsibilities

I handled the logo redesign, including trend research, sketching concepts, creating vector options, testing color palettes, refining the final direction, and delivering a logo system that works for the company.

Key Results

The team chose a final logo that aligns with the business direction, works across digital platforms, supports the updated homepage and marketing materials, and was completed on time.

Background

ScoutLocal is a startup that uses Artificial intelligence (AI) to help people easily discover local shops, makers, communities, and events. It offers a simple, easy to use experience that helps people find handmade, unique, and high quality products without feeling overwhelmed.

The company needed a new logo because the original branding and color palette didn’t match where the product was heading, and the style felt outdated. They had worked with an agency on a rebrand, but the colors and design didn’t feel unique, and the logo reminded people of Airbnb. The team wanted a visual identity that aligned more closely with their business goals and what the brand truly represents.

The platform’s mission is to make it easier for people to find and support local businesses. We want to position the brand as helpful, modern, and community driven. The visual identity should feel clean, welcoming, and unique so it stands out from other platforms.

Problem Statement

One of the reasons the original logo didn’t work was the lack of contrast. It used a light blue background with a baby blue icon and text, which made it hard to read. It also didn’t scale well across different sizes or layouts, whether horizontal, stacked, or used as a standalone icon. The symbol itself, a small store inside a map pin, didn’t feel unique. It looked more like a generic command icon than a brand mark.

The version created by the agency also wasn’t a good fit. The loop shape inside the house symbol reminded people of Airbnb, which made it feel unoriginal. The color palette didn’t work well for the website either because the teal color is commonly associated with healthcare and wellness brands.

Overall, the brand lacked a clear identity and personality. It didn’t communicate what ScoutLocal stands for or what makes it unique, so the visual branding felt disconnected from the product. When I was working on the webpage design and reviewing the agency’s logo, it just didn’t match. The founder also didn’t like the agency version, so she never approved it. I could tell she needed help, so I asked if she wanted me to work on the branding, and she said yes.

The company needed a logo that could be rolled out consistently across all the digital mediums including website, product pages, marketing materials, email campaigns and vendor promotion and events. Choosing a clear direction for the brand was very important and it’s essential so we could move forward with design, development and create consistency and make sure that all of the future design work was aligned with the new identity.

The original logo felt generic and was hard to read because the colors had low contrast.

The agency concept felt too close to Airbnb and the teal color palette didn’t work well in the product UI.

Project Goal

ScoutLocal team and I wanted to create a brand identity that truly reflects who ScoutLocal serves, because we work with many artisans, makers, and small shops who create their products by hand. The logo needed to feel friendly, approachable, modern, and in line with current design trends. It also needed to clearly communicate heart and trust, so people feel that ScoutLocal is a reliable place to discover local businesses. Our goal was to create a clearer, more recognizable symbol that shows our support for the community, builds trust, and creates a consistent identity across the website and all marketing materials.

Design Process

My design process was simple and collaborative with quick research, sketching and exploration, then refining the strongest idea with our internal design team.

01. Discover & Research

I did a quick competitor scan to understand how other companies and platform handle local discovery and handmade communities. Yelp’s brand feels bold and super easy to recognize, but it doesn’t really highlight small handmade shops. Google Maps is great for location searches, but it is not the best for finding unique local makers or hidden creative spots. Nextdoor is local, but it tends to feel more like neighborhood discussions than a curated discovery experience. Eventbrite helped me see how people browse local events, and their new abstract “E” logo shows movement and discovery in a fun way. MadeIt has a very human, artsy feel with its handwritten “m,” which matches the handmade community really well, although the platform can feel a bit heavy to use. And Etsy has a clean, modern look with strong product cards, but it focuses mainly on online selling rather than helping you discover local shops around your city. This quick scan helped me see what works, what feels too generic, and where ScoutLocal can build a more relatable, friendly brand for real local businesses.

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Also, the founder shared about her vision, she shared a rough sketch of a map pin swirled into an “L.” She liked the idea of using a pin with a thinner, more whimsical “L.” She also showed sketches from another designer but felt the heart concepts were not unique enough. She was not concerned about tying the icon to the wordmark and wanted a strong standalone symbol.

I started my research by collecting modern logo references and pinning them on Pinterest to spot patterns and trends. I noticed a lot of logos are moving toward clean, minimal shapes with soft curves that feel warm and human. Letter based marks are also popular because they feel modern but still personal. For ScoutLocal, I wanted the brand to feel like local love, appreciating your neighborhood, small shops, and the people who make a community feel real. I had the idea to use the letter S and L to form a shape that feels friendly, approachable and memorable.

02. Exploration

In my sketches, I tested a few clear directions. I explored how S and L could work as a simple symbol, and I also tried placing them inside a map pin since location is a big part of the product. I built on the founder’s early "Pin & L" sketch and refined a couple ideas from another designer to make them cleaner and more memorable. I also tested a compass inspired option, then narrowed down the directions based on clarity, uniqueness, and how well they fit the brand.

I explored several directions based on the hearts, map pins, hand lettering integrations and more geometric compass inspired shapes. Each direction tested a different meaning of the branding. My early explorations focused on simple, approachable shapes like hearts, soft map pins and clean letterforms. I experimented with curve softness, stroke weights, and how tightly the letter should sit inside the symbol. The goal was to find mark that felt friendly, modern and easy to recognize even at very small sizes.

After reviewing the concepts together with the team, our stakeholder and the team were most drawn to the S and L inside the heart. It felt warmest, most approachable, and the most “ScoutLocal”. We removed the freehand, organic sketches because they felt a little too casual for the brand. We also decided to remove the heavier compass style marks and the other variations because they came across as more traditional and didn’t match with the friendly, community driven direction we were going for.

03. Design Decisions

The symbol combines the S and L from ScoutLocal and shapes them into a heart to represent local love, meaning support for your neighborhood, local shops, and small businesses. I chose the heart because it feels welcoming and human, and it communicates connection, community, and care, which fits ScoutLocal’s mission. I explored several color combinations, and the founder shared them with a few clients for real feedback, and the green, sage, and cream palette stood out as the strongest option because it feels fresh, natural, and works well on both light and dark backgrounds. I also kept the mark built from simple shapes so it scales cleanly from a small app icon to larger uses, and it stays clear and readable even at very small sizes while meeting contrast needs for accessibility.

The type direction was mostly in place before I started the logo work. The founder had already leaned toward Nunito during the earlier agency rebrand, but the overall logo direction did not work out. I still wanted to validate the typography, so I explored a few options with the team, including Comfortaa, Source Code Pro, and Source Sans 3, and confirmed that Nunito from Google Fonts was the best primary brand font. Nunito feels friendly, clean, and slightly playful, and its rounded shapes match the soft curves in the icon, so it paired well with the new logo I designed. For the future homepage redesign, I plan to use Nunito for headers and sub headers, Source Sans 3 for body and smaller text, and Comfortaa for quotes and highlighted callouts.

Challenges

I had only a week and a half to complete the logo design, including gathering feedback, making revisions, and making decision with the team. The timeline was tight, so I had to stay extremely focused and efficient. Overall, we did not have any conflicting feedback, but a few color related concerns came up. Some color combinations unintentionally gave a food industry impression. For example, certain brown or cream tones reminded people of ice cream shops or sandwich and café brands. This helped us refine our palette direction. A few early logo variations lost clarity when scaled down to smaller sizes. At favicon size and mobile UI scale, some shapes were no longer readable, so those options were removed.

So, based on these feedback, I added a darker variation of the modern sage for better contrast and flexibility, and I also created a white background version as the standard option. I first tested the heart shaped symbol at the smallest favicon size, and the S and L heart mark stayed clear and easy to read, which made it a strong direction to move forward with. From there, I placed the logo variations into real website contexts like the global navigation and footer to see how they look in the UI. The white background version consistently looked the best because it felt cleaner, more friendly, and more aligned with our marketing goals and the overall site experience, so we chose it as the final design.