HiringRebrand & Web Redesign Mockup - Project Brief
Project Overview: Bidsquare.com
We're redesigning our logo, visual identity, and the marketplace experience for an established online auction platform, keeping the existing name but leaving everything else open: color, type, mark, layout, and the overall look and feel.
This is two connected pieces of work going to one person or team: the brand identity, and the UI for a new version of the marketplace that's launching soon. We're looking for someone who can carry one visual language across both. Company name and site URLs will be shared directly with the selected candidate.
Who We Are
The company was founded in 2014 by six of the most respected independent auction houses in the industry, who were tired of being handed bad technology built by developers who didn't understand how auctions actually work, and who started the company to give auction houses a better way to reach new bidders beyond their own existing audiences, without relying on third-party marketplaces that take a cut and don't have the auction house's best interests in mind.
As the company grew and listened to auction houses, a second problem became clear: those same houses lacked good technology to run their own sales, both behind the scenes with inventory management and on the front end with a branded website of their own, so they weren't locked into paying high commissions to third parties indefinitely. So the company built a software platform that solves both of those problems, and as that software side grew into a genuine success on its own, the original marketplace side of the business ended up getting less attention and investment, which is part of why it started to feel dated. We're relaunching the marketplace now with the same founding goal the company started with: help auction houses grow, own their own data, and stop overpaying middlemen.
How Online Auctions Normally Work
For anyone new to this world: independent auction houses hold sales of art, furniture, jewelry, and collectibles, in person or online, where bidders register, place bids, and the highest bid wins, usually paying the winning bid plus a buyer's premium fee on top.
Most independent auction houses don't have enough of their own traffic to fill a sale, so they list on marketplaces that pool bidders from many houses into one site, and the two biggest today are LiveAuctioneers and Invaluable. On those platforms, the marketplace runs the whole transaction end to end, takes a cut, and owns the bidder relationship, the contact info, and the purchase history, rather than the auction house that built the reputation in the first place.
How We're Different
We also help collectors discover items across many vetted auction houses, but when a collector finds something they want, they're sent to bid directly on that auction house's own website rather than on our marketplace, so the auction house keeps the relationship and the data while our job is to be the trusted front door and then get out of the way.
Our own research backs up why this matters to collectors, even if they wouldn't describe it in these terms. In a survey of 186 collectors, trust in the seller mattered more than the sheer breadth of what was available to browse, and the one feature every collector segment wanted, no matter how much they spend, was clear, verifiable sold price history, with full price transparency, including the buyer's premium, rated critical by every serious collector we surveyed. Community features like forums or social feeds tested with almost no interest at any spending level, which tells us people come here to trust and to buy rather than to socialize.
Why Now
There's meaningful timing behind this relaunch - one main competitor has been going through leadership instability and the other has been growing more dominant and charging auction houses increasingly high fees, and because so many auction houses depend on it for bidder volume, they don't have much leverage to push back.
On the collector side, our data shows that the competitor LiveAuctioneers’ users have been increasingly frustrated with high fees, weak customer support, and poorly vetted sellers, including counterfeit items slipping through, and that frustration is an opening for us on both sides of the marketplace, with auction houses looking for a better partner and collectors looking for a more trustworthy place to buy.
The bigger opportunity, and the one this redesign is really in service of, is generational, since auction participation has always skewed older, and that's an awareness gap across the whole industry, not something unique to us.
We're building a brand and product that genuinely appeals to a younger audience, without losing the older collectors who are the current lifeblood of the business.
Who We're Designing For
Our current collector base skews older (55+) and is generally loyal to the brand as it is. The opportunity is a younger audience, roughly 25-40, who isn't finding auctions right now.
We surveyed 600 people in that age range separately. They're not a blank slate on this kind of shopping. They're already comfortable with sites like Etsy, 1stDibs, Chairish, for example, so their bar for a modern, trustworthy interface is set by those experiences, not by traditional auction sites. That's the visual company we need to keep, while staying credible to a 30-year collector spending well into five figures a year.
Brand Personality
Three words describe the direction we're going for:
Trustworthy — trust in the seller outweighed breadth of selection in every collector segment we surveyed, and this needs to come through visually, not just in copy.
Curated — community and social features had almost no appeal at any spending level, so this should feel like a small number of good things chosen carefully, not a busy open marketplace.
Current — the audience we're trying to reach already has a high bar set by WhatNot, Catawiki, Etsy, so the design needs to read as-of-the-moment without tipping into cold or sterile.
Competitor & Inspiration References
Marketplace side:
LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable — direct competitors, worth knowing but not worth imitating
1stDibs, Chairish — good references for a premium, gallery-adjacent feel
StockX, WhatNot — references for a modern, discovery-driven feel that still reads as trustworthy
Catawiki — worth a look for how it balances both
Look and Feel
We want something that reads as premium and trustworthy first and modern second, closer to the world of auction houses and galleries than to a generic tech or SaaS dashboard.
What our research tells us to design toward:
Trust over browsing volume. Design it like a curated collection you can trust, not a catalog to endlessly scroll.
Price and sold-price data need to feel front and center, not buried. This was the one thing every collector segment agreed on.
Skip community/social features in the visual language. No feeds, no forums, no "join the conversation" energy.
The bar for modern polish is set by WhatNot and Etsy for younger buyers, but the credibility bar is set by a 30-year collector spending $25K+ a year. Both need to hold at once.
It should feel warm rather than cold, established rather than sterile, so a user can look at the new logo and recognize it as an evolution of the current brand rather than a completely different company. (Unless you can justify a complete move away.) We definitely want to get rid of the bright teal, it's hard on the eyes, but we're open to a different teal or a different color entirely.
What We Need
Primary logo — used for the marketplace site.
Secondary/software logo — for our software platform. A lockup built on the primary mark, not a separate identity. Someone should look at both and immediately know they're the same company.
Marketplace UI (V1) — a redesigned marketplace website mockup built on the new identity. This is the collector-facing discovery and browsing experience. It does not include the software platform's website, that stays out of scope for now.
Deliverables
3 mood boards
Proposed initial directions, presented early in the process before a single direction is selected
Primary logo
Horizontal and stacked/vertical lockups
Secondary logo lockup
Built on the primary mark (for SaaS)
Icon / submark
For favicon, app icon, social avatars
Color palette
Primary and secondary, accessible contrast
Typography system
Headline and body font recommendations
Marketplace UI (V1)
Key screens: homepage, browse/discovery, item detail, search/filter
Brand guidelines document
Delivered at project wrap: usage rules, clear space, minimum size, do's and don'ts, full system reference
File formats
Source files (AI, EPS, SVG, Figma) plus PNG, JPG, PDF exports
Light and dark variants
For both marks
Not in Scope for This Phase
Software platform website redesign
Full design system / component library beyond the key marketplace screens above
Marketing collateral beyond logo usage examples
Ideal Candidate
5+ years of professional brand identity work, with real UX/UI design experience alongside it, not just logo work
Portfolio with marketplace, luxury, or e-commerce brand and product work
Comfortable explaining the thinking behind design choices, not just delivering visuals
Available for live calls for kickoff, presentations, and reviews
Bonus: auction industry experience or art industry experience
Process, Decision-Making, and Existing Assets
Final direction is approved by three internal stakeholders (leadership team). The approved direction will also be shared with our board as an FYI, and they may have feedback, so please be prepared for a possible round of input after board review, even though the board isn't part of the core approval loop.
There will be a single point of contact throughout the engagement.
This is a clean slate on the marketplace UI side, no existing dev framework or constraints to design around. Old logo source files exist and will be provided to the selected designer as a starting reference.
Timeline
Kickoff call and brand questionnaire, then discovery leading into 3 mood boards as proposed initial directions. Once a direction is selected, move into logo refinement and marketplace UI screens built on that system. Two included rounds of revisions on the selected direction. Final delivery includes all source files and the brand guidelines document.
Target: 4-8 weeks from kickoff to final files, identity and V1 marketplace screens.
Ownership & Usage Rights
We own all final files and full usage rights upon completion and payment.
What We Need from Applicants
3-5 portfolio links most relevant to this brand's tone, ideally showing both brand and product/UI work
A description of their process, concept to final files
An estimated cost and timeline for the scope described here
Confirmation they can handle both brand identity and UI work, or how they'd split it if working with a partner
Reach out directly with all information required to roumena@trueffle.com - candidates who reach out directly to the client will not be considered.