Patreon’s Rebrand Is Here And This Is Why You Should Care

Patreon, known for its role in championing creator monetisation, is undergoing a major rebrand.

Here’s why you should care about it.

While it’s not unheard of for brands to be switching things up to suit the evolving socialsphere, Patreon’s rebrand has the potential to shape digital culture as we know it. 

In-keeping with its creator-first approach, Patreon’s rebrand will be adding a whole host of new features to its platform and newly-designed mobile app for the purpose of creating an “everything platform”. That which better serves both creators and fans. These incremental features speak to Patreon’s wider ambition to move beyond the membership model it initially launched with, towards becoming more of a social outlet and wide-ranging content creation tool for creators. 

Patreon’s decade-long run as an advocating platform for the creator community puts its users in good stead for welcoming change. Creators trust that the platform has their best interests at heart and, in turn, should be excited for what the next decade will look like for them. 

But what exactly should they be expecting?

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM PATREON’S REBRAND

Community-first additions

At the heart of Patreon’s rebrand are creators and fans (otherwise known as Patrons).

Back in July, Patreon soft-launched its Community Chats feature and, to much avail, saw creators with early access welcome over 160,000 new fans to their communities. This Discord-esque feature is now accessible to all content creators who share their work via Patreon, allowing them to build a more sustainable community around their content and generally connect with their fans on a deeper level according to their subscription tier. 

Since the launch, Patreon is adamant that this is not intended to replace Discord. If anything it wishes to work hand-in-hand with the server-based platform by letting creators choose where they’d like to run their Community Chats. 

With the introduction of Community Chats, member profiles have been revamped to include more details such as a bio, social media links and profile pictures. While this information is only visible to supporters of the same creator as them, member profiles in the future could contain more details such as what subscription tier an individual is subscribed to, items they’ve purchased and what other creators they support. 

Despite the teething problems surrounding data privacy, this appears to be a promising direction for users, as it fosters connection between those who share a community. 

Intentional design 

The creator-led adoption of a new slew of features doesn’t stop there, however. Patreon’s rebrand prides itself on representing a “brand that is built to adapt, so that any creator can make it their own”. To prove this, Patreon has granted creators the freedom to design their own Patreon space, defining how their posts appear and how their community interacts. 

It’s time to address the elephant in the room. The new logo. 

Though recently coming under fire for its nod to “serious modern design fatigue” – we mean…it literally is just a blob on our screens – the intention behind said shapeless blob is rather genius. 

Created specifically with this creative freedom in mind, the newly-revised logo will eventually be entirely customisable. The company says it’s working on a tool to allow creators to tailor the logo to their own aesthetic and identity using their own colours, textures and motion. By allowing its logo to be customised, Patreon fosters an association with it among users on the wider net. Though the logo will start to see various renditions and take on many new forms, its shape will always be recognised as Patreon’s. 

Pretty impressive for a silver bean.

Selling power

In a bid to prove its dedication to becoming an “all-in-one” app, Patreon’s rebrand has opened it up to the world of ecommerce. 

Though monthly fan subscriptions are Patreon’s bread and butter, creators will now be able to sell one-off digital goods and offer free subscriptions. 

Patreon’s Chief Product Officer, Julian Gutman reassures us that “the free to paid path is quite successful”. In fact, this can only benefit creators, as they’ll be able to use the free subscription tier list to run content such as newsletters to help reach all of their fans at once. In turn, this should encourage them to make a monthly pledge. 

The new ecommerce feature also makes the life of a Patreon creator much easier. 

Rather than directing their fans to other platforms, they are able to directly sell products such as bonus podcasts, music, writing or any sort of downloadable content to their fans on Patreon. For ecommerce transactions, Patreon will keep 5% of the sale plus tax and processing fees. This is already way less than the 8%+ it takes from subscriptions. 

How’s that for an “everything app”!

Collections

The key to running a creative platform successfully is all in its layout and navigation. 

There is often a lot going on on such visual platforms and users can become overwhelmed with where to look, turn and interact. In turn, this can be detrimental to a creator’s work as they run the risk of not being found and aspects of their work being overlooked. 

But Patreon’s rebrand has the answer.

Collections. 

Patreon’s new Home feed will now allow creators to group their work into Collections, however they see fit. Custom cover photos can also be added to each Collection to best describe what’s inside. 

Granting Patreon creators the freedom to organise their feeds is testament to Patreon’s rebrand understanding that they know their audience best and can, therefore, reach them more effectively. This was proven in the feature’s testing phase, as creators saw increases in member discovery and consumption of posts – specifically older posts, as they now appear in carefully-curated Collections. 

Creators are receiving more love on older – and possibly forgotten work – whilst fans are exposed to a range of previously undiscovered content. It’s a win-win. 

WHY NOW?

Patreon’s rebrand is right on cue. 

The creatorsphere has undergone – and continues to undergo – many changes in recent years, but the question on everybody’s lips remains: What are platforms doing to ensure creators have full ownership of their work and businesses?

Patreon CEO, Jack Conte, reiterates the fact that “creators don’t have ownership and control on the platforms they use, they’re just renting spaces from these other surfaces”, but “on Patreon, they own the surface. It’s theirs”. This discussion is particularly prevalent today as we’ve seen an increase in the number of Instagram creators falling victim to the sudden loss of their accounts through no fault of their own. For businesses who operate and rely on this platform, this setback is unfathomable and is one Patreon has pledged to tackle on its own platform. 

But can Patreon deliver?

Last year Patreon creators, who rely on Vimeo to host their work, were told they could lose it all if they didn’t pay unexpected cost increases. In response to this, Patreon launched its very own video-hosting feature as a way of giving creators a more direct connection with their fans without having to divert their attention to another platform. 

Perhaps this was the start of Patreon’s rebrand that Conte had always envisioned. 

As for the future of Patreon, Conte believes more and more people will continue to become professional creators with the power shifting toward the people and away from platforms and companies. This is evident in Patreon’s current 6 million-strong user base seeing a 3 million user increase in the last three years alone. 

This just proves that the demand for more ownership, community-focus and creative freedom is there. All creators need is a platform to execute this. We believe Patreon’s rebrand will offer exactly this.

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