Mission
Giving some help to redesign Sidebar, a newsletter every designer should subscribe to.

CLIENT

Sacha Greif

TYPE

Newsletter

Since the creation of the project in 2012 by my friend and colleague Sacha Greif, I immediately knew that Sidebar was an excellent idea. The pitch is simple: 5 design related links in your inbox every day, for free. The content selection is made by a panel of curators, mostly designers. 

Today, four years later, with more than 15,000 subscribers and over 7,000 links posted, we can say that Sidebar has become a solid reference for designers all around the world. As a curator myself, I find it refreshing to have a tool to share interesting design links with thousands and thousands of designers worldwide. Besides that, I'm also giving some help to maintain sidebar on the admin side when Sacha needs it.

In June 2016, when I was told about the redesign, I’ve offered my help because I particularly like this project as you already know. 

CHAP 1.0

Sidebar
New identity

Since its very beginning, Sacha has created a strong and solid identity which mostly relays on a bicolor system with Orange and white colors. 

The new version of Sidebar keeps those core visual elements but brings GT Eesti (by the Grilli type foundry) as a new core typeface and includes more space to improve readability. Last but not least, the new website shows the most visible part of the redesign with a completely new user interface with lots of cool features.

FIG. #1   SIDEBAR 2.0 CORE IDENTITY

CHAP 2.0

Sidebar 2.0 newsletter

To help Sacha in the redesign, I’ve taken the task to create the newsletter new identity while he was already working hard on the website. I’ve proposed few versions in order to let him decide what could be most suitable in terms of visual design but also for the integration part (because newsletter integration is a tough thing if you know what I mean).

FIG #2  SIDEBAR 2.0 NEWSLETTER PROPOSAL

And here is the version Sacha kept for the newsletter. That’s pretty much it on my side but few iterations have been realized since the public launch.

If you want to know more about the redesign you could take a look at this Medium article. And of course, if it’s not done yet, you could subscribe to the Sidebar newsletter, it’s absolutely free!

FIG #3  SIDEBAR 2.0 FINAL COMP