Rebranding My Blog on a Budget

Rebranding my blog has been a long time coming. Since I started Naturally Nicoletta nearly 3 years ago, I always wanted it to embody the core essence of who I am but I always felt it fell flat. As someone who is blogging as a hobby (for now) and on a college student budget, as much as I would LOVE to work with designers, that's not quite in my budget. I'm not world's best graphic or web designer but I've learned a few things in my day–for this rebrand, I have decided to take the path of least resistance and do some things on my own and others not. Here's how I did it.

Step #1: Starting to think about the essence of my brand

If you don't know, I am graduating with a degree in Marketing and have had my fair share of learning about branding. I never really gave too much thought about what I wanted Naturally Nicoletta to be but as my college career has be closing out, I have realized that I want this to be more than just a place to share my thoughts and document my life. I want to take Naturally Nicoletta seriously because that's where my passion has been all along.

In the past 6 months, I've been thinking on and off about rebranding my blog and how to go about it. I have been thinking about core elements that I want to focus on like spirituality, self love, and self exploration. I continue to ask myself, "why did I start this?" What was the intention behind the blog? I started this thing to document my life, yes, but more so to be the person I always wanted in my life. That person up look to for advice, guidance, to make me feel less alone. While Naturally Nicoletta has shifted and changed over the years as I have, the core essence has been the same: to be a guide for others and to inspire others to trust in their own light.

Step #2: Look at all my options

This part took the longest because there are so many options out there. While I am proficient in Adobe InDesign, I am by no means a graphic designer and felt daunted by the task of fully redesigning my website and rebranding my blog. I follow several graphic/web designers (@chloeleonardstudio is one of my favs!) for inspiration on what direction to go in and I even talked to a few designer friends for advice. Ultimately, while I would love to have a completely unique blog and branding, I knew it was not in my budget and I also knew I would be able to do about 75% of the work with my current knowledge of Adobe Suite and Wordpress.

I'm very much an all or nothing type of gal. I love doing things all by myself and I tend to teach myself how to do things just so I can do them myself. The original branding of this blog is a great testament to that. The summer that I started Naturally Nicoletta, I was learning the basics of InDesign in my internship. I took those skills and applied it to a very basic logo that has been with me for the past 3 years. I also watched hours of YouTube videos on using the Genesis framework for Wordpress and how to customize the FoodiePro Theme. Honestly, I did a pretty good job but I always felt like it was missing something.

Step 3: Finding What Worked Best for My Budget, Knowledge Level, etc.

Because I have prior design experience, I felt that the path of least resistance (or the middle way, if you're into Buddhist philosophy like I am) included my own work and someone else's. I was planning on using another Genesis Theme on Studio Press but I wasn't 100% sold. A friend told me that Wordpress themes were also sold on Etsy so I decided to take a look and found exactly what I was looking for–something functional but also a pretty, unique, and creative design (something that didn't look so basic). Turns out the design was cheaper than my original one and Etsy also has really beautiful clip/vector art that sparked my creative mind for a logo.

I ended up buying a theme from HeartenMade and a pack of sun and moon designs from NatPurple. All of this was under $100 which if you've looked into rebranding, you know this really affordable.

Rebrand Timeline

This timeline will look different for everyone but I wanted to give you a sneak peak into how I did it. Before all of the design work, I looked at every single blog post I had and organized them into a functional menu for my homepage then I went through my current pages, menus, etc. and reorganized just to make things easier for myself when I switched themes.

After that, I basically spent a full week working on different aspects of the rebrand. I spent one day solely on my logo, another drafting instagram graphics, another switching themes, then final touches. While this whole process has taken me about 6 months to think about, I physically rebranded my blog in about 1.5 weeks. This is quick and I blame that on my stubborn Aries nature that wants to get everything done RIGHT NOW lol.

Advice For You if You're Rebranding Your Blog

Figure out what works for you. You don't have to do everything alone but you also don't have to shell out thousands of dollars if that's not in your budget. There are some amazing tutorials on basic graphic and web design and most themes have really great guides on how to install and customize them. If you have no idea what creative direction you want to go in, I suggest following other designers and bloggers that stand out to you in order to get inspiration. Don't be afraid to get people's suggestions on what they envision when they think of your brand and once you have some drafts of design, get people's advice! I sent my first rebrand logo draft to at least 10 people and got some amazing advice and direction to go in. Remember: people are here to help you! This is not a competition or something you have to hide from the world if it's not perfect. (Psssst. I'd love to offer you guidance, direction, or just initial thoughts if you're in those beginning phases of rebranding)

The New Naturally Nicoletta

While Naturally Nicoletta is the same as it's always been, I feel like rebranding my blog is giving me space to hone in on its purpose and guide it down a path to inspire others to find their own light and guide them through the journey of awakening. I want to be here to support you, always. If you want to get started, check out my new resources page for a longggg list of books, podcasts, and tools I recommend to find peace in the present moment, trust in yourself, and more clarity throughout your life.

I'd love to know what you think of the new look. I'm so excited to share with you this next chapter–I think it's going to be a good one!