LinkedIn Editorial Is Now LinkedIn News, With an Eye to Expanding Brand Awareness Globally

The professional network began a thorough branding overhaul, called Project Otis, two years ago to revamp its logo, typography, colors and shapes. Updates started appearing on the site last June.

The next steps of Project Otis are being rolled out globally this week, with the rebranding of LinkedIn News and corresponding distinctive visual identity.

The professional network made its entry into editorial and news eight years ago, and has since grown the team to include 76 editors across 15 countries. A morning curation of news, called Daily Rundown, also more than doubled the number of subscribers in over a year and is now received by over 46 million people in 96 countries, written in nine languages.

LinkedIn Live has seen streams go up 158% since February, with Live videos seeing 23 times more comments and six times more reactions than native videos. That larger engagement is, in part, due to an increase in production.

New LinkedIn Live episodes now include Business Unusual, which runs four days per week to highlight stories of how professionals are navigating the coronavirus pandemic, from CEOs taking leadership roles to the challenges of working from home with kids.

“The global editorial team plays a central part in LinkedIn’s professional community: creating original content and helping to cultivate and spread the insights of members, influencers and publishers,” LinkedIn News executive editor Dan Roth said in an email.

As the news vertical’s popularity grew, “we knew it was time to build a better identity for the team—in terms of the name and in the look and feel of our work—so that members would be able to instantly identify who they were hearing from and what our goals were,” he added. “A big part of this rebranding is about continuing to build trust: trust that there are real editors behind this work who are there for professionals.”

LinkedIn found that the lack of visual consistency made it difficult for members to identify content from its own editorial team, and the name “Editorial” wasn’t resonating globally.

The company set three goals for the rebranding and revamping: driving editorial recognition, clearly speaking to its values, and creating a visual identity that is both consistent with LinkedIn yet distinctive.

The name change was aimed at reinforcing the editorial team’s focus on fact-based news globally. LinkedIn noted that one exception in its rebranding is China, where it determined that a name roughly translating to LinkedIn Info was a better fit.

The new color palette for LinkedIn News leans toward the warmer end of the spectrum, as the professional network did in last June’s corporate rebranding, with “warm greys, conversational orange and complemented blue.”

The platform uses the Community custom typeface LinkedIn unveiled last June, but in a semibold iteration to give LinkedIn News a distinct editorial appearance. Custom elements will also be incorporated to help showcase the editorial team’s work and tie content together.

The new design began rolling out globally this week across all LinkedIn editor profiles, LinkedIn News social pages and editorial series:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn