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Trustpilot rebranded in June 2018 with a new logo, visual identity and brand films, It's Nice That reported. Research among consumers and business users had shown a shift in how review sites were seen: consumers wanted more transparency, and businesses were using reviews to gather honest feedback and improve. The rebrand was meant to reflect that change in mindset.

The previous logo was a row of five stars with a yellow and black tick box. The new mark keeps the star but reduces it to one, with an arrow embedded inside, and the tick box is gone. The colour scheme uses a fresher version of the brand's green, alongside navy, black and white. The consultancy described the identity as understated, designed to sit comfortably next to the brands featured on the site, and said the symbol was more easily identifiable. With a responsive design and native fonts, it said, the system was more coherent, adaptable and easier for businesses to adopt.

Its digital design director described a rare case where the product itself is the identity, so it needed to be dynamic and adaptable to its environment, and said the team had considered how the system could evolve as the use of review sites changed. The accompanying films were made in-house and kept similarly simple, with pastel colours and close-cropped imagery.

For a review platform, restraint is the right instinct.

It's Nice That quoted the agency's digital design director, Laura Oakden, on the central problem: this was a unique example where the product itself is the identity, so it had to be dynamic and adaptable to its environment. The team, she said, had considered how the system could evolve as the use of review sites changes. The agency also argued the new symbol was more easily identifiable, and that responsive design and native fonts made the identity more coherent and easier for brands to adopt. Designing a logo to live on other companies' websites is the real brief, and understated was the only sensible answer.

Trustpilot's logo lives on other companies' websites, in widgets and badges, and anything louder would fight its hosts. The arrow inside the star is a neat, quiet nod to improvement rather than judgement. The cost is personality: a single green star is easy to place and easy to overlook, which for a brand built on trust may be the point.