by Chude Jideonwo

Typically, when content companies globally refresh their identities, or update accordingly, they – rightly – spend time detailing the imperatives that led to this movement, or justify the sync between vision, strategic planning and brand identity.

Yesterday, after 6 months of an extensive review, and 3 months of back and forth-ing between our internal teams and our partners at Fourth Canvas, we launched a new identity for YNaija.com.

 

So what is the existential challenge we were contending that enabled this brand re-fresh?

Nothing.

The YNaija mission remains the same – we are here to interpret and explain the news as it concerns Nigeria’s young people. We are the thinking wo(man)’s guide to the news and the culture, dissecting and shaping reactions to the issues and ideas that matter.

The mission has remained the same. It has never been more urgent – in a space where cultural analyses are almost non-existent, the art of the explainer is a widening gap to be filled, and our evolutions in politics, an open economy, technology and the culture are moving as rapidly as ever.

So why did we decide on a new brand identify? Because we wanted to fall in love.

 

We had fallen out of love with the brand identity for the newspaper that we had, and we wanted to fall in love again. Because we are in sync with our readers – that differentiated, discerning, demanding top of the ladder that powers YNaija.com’s influence – we also wanted them to fall in love, not just with our words, but also with our dress.

We spent the past six months falling in love again with the mission of YNaija – building a structure, a format and a set of operational processes to respond to a more competitive space and a reader-base that is hard to impress, which is just the way we want it. And after renewing our vows, we decided we wanted a new ceremony.

And we decided to follow our hearts.

Our demand was simple: A design that we loved. We wanted to fall, and we wanted to fall hard.

We did. The YNaija.com logo, the new desktop and mobile site make us gooey with excitement and feeling.

That’s why we did it. It’s a gift to you, because you demand and deserve the very best. But it’s also a gift to us – because we want to fall in love, for us to do the jobs you need us to do.

We hope you fall in love with it as hard as we have.

Yours-in-an-always-search-for-beauty
Chude Jideonwo
Editor-in-Chief.