Oberlo started out purely as a dropshipping app owned by e-commerce giant Shopify, and until recently focused mainly on providing useful products and tools to its entrepreneur audience. But as it grew, Oberlo wanted to become a broader content platform for these users, a place for members to not only access those tools but also take online business courses, and learn through articles, podcasts and ebooks in the form of advice and interviews with other entrepreneurs. Oberlo worked with branding agency Design Studio to revamp its brand to convey this new approach, and the resulting identity expertly toes the line between professionalism and the scrappy energy of a start-up.

In the visual identity, the overarching creative concept was the DIY CEO and their “hustler spirit”, its target audience being the young generation of entrepreneurs building brands from their bedrooms. We wanted to visualise the messiness and imperfection of building a business to create a brand that felt authentic, and didn’t take itself too seriously. This system features bold but friendly typography and photography, and illustrations by Guy Field and Appear Offline that ties into themes of the ups and downs of an entrepreneur’s journey. We wanted these drawings to have a vibe of the business idea scribbled hastily on a napkin over dinner. These are used across the system as if they were sketched and scrawled over perfectly set elements, including the logo.