Ife Thomas personal brand

Ife Thomas is known for several titles, among which:

• storyteller – building personal and brand stories;
• impact speaker – talking about neurodiversity and inclusion in corporate communication;
• confidence coach – creator of The Confidence Star;
• author of 3 books: Three Mirrors of Radical Honesty, Finding the Light in the Darkness, Powerlift Your Career.

In the second half of 2025 I've embarked on upgrading Ife's brand across multiple platforms, including her personal website, LinkedIn profile and product pages, to match the new vision that we had defined.

Context and the Vision

The idea of rebranding came at the time of several major changes in Ife's professional life:

1. shift of the focus from motivational speaking and confidence coaching to professional storytelling;
2. introduction of corporate-communication training as Ife's new offer built around the Three Mirrors of Radical Honesty framework seeded by her TEDx talk and later the book of the same name;
3. separation from The Mind Workout brand under which she operated in the past;
4. significant change of her look, most prominently – the hair style.

In order to reflect this new stage of Ife's personal brand, we've decided to update her online image, language and positioning to feel more premium, calm and authentic, in contrast to the former upbeat, loud and entertaining vibe.

The timeline for this update was rather tight, therefore the change had to be implemented quickly, without any major technical interventions. For the website, which included also a blog and an online store, all hosted on Shopify for many years, it meant implementing the changes within the existing infrastructure and website theme.

New photo set

With my background in photography, we've started from the visual part of Ife's brand, in particular – creating a collection of photos that reflect her new image.

Below are a few examples of Ife's previous image. It was intentionally striking and attracting attention, emphasised by the extensive use of make-up, beauty products and fashionable outfits. One of the central features of this image was the straight pink hair with a hat, which have built the recognition of her brand in the motivational-speaking community.

To be coherent with the shifted focus on radical honesty and authenticity, the new photos were taken in the natural setting where possible, with the minimal use of make-up. It involved almost no staged posing and no artificial studio environments, complemented with neutral understated outfits.

Below are a few of the photos that we took, reflecting this new image. The difference between the two versions of Ife Thomas is quite evident, with her afro hair style playing the central role.

Personal website

Next step was updating Ife's personal website to match the new brand identity. Below are a few screenshots of the old version. In line with the previous visual image, it featured a bright colour palette and a lot of elements motivating visitors to engage. The most prominent such element was the Book Ife button, appearing multiple times across the website, reinforcing her image as an entertainment figure.

Apart from aesthetics, several other elements of the website were incoherent with the new brand image:

1. banner at the top, inviting people to BOOK IFE NOW! was putting too much emphasis on making a sale instead of communicating the value to a potential customer;
2. top navigation bar was unnecessarily wide, taking too much space on the screen;
3. chat button at the bottom was distracting, while having little relevance for the lead generation, since most clients contacted Ife via email or calendar bookings;
4. contact email with the old domain name didn't match the one of her website, which could be perceived as less professional;
5. the long list of payment methods in the footer section made it look more like an online store rather than a professional page.

In the updated design I've changed the colour palette to more neutral tones, reduced visual clutter and made the main sections of Ife's activity presented more prominently on the Home page and in the navigation menu.

Storytelling page

Significant effort went into the Storytelling section of the website, which has been Ife's primary focus at the time. After the successful completion of 3 cohorts and the continuing interest of more people to participate, we've decided to create a dedicated page. We've recorded an interview-style video that explores Ife's own story behind this passion of hers, and built the page around it.

Looking at it from a strategic standpoint, we've expanded the offer with three tiers at different price points to better serve people with different needs and priorities:

1. premium – focused 1-to-1 format, to get to results as quickly as possible;
2. standard – group format with a fixed schedule at a slower pace;
3. webinar – a pre-recorded set of masterclass videos to learn at individual pace.

This allowed to better position Ife's professional level through the premium tier, while clearly communicating the economic benefit of joining one of the future cohorts at the reduced fee.

Product pages

Several physical products created by Ife have been designed or reworked by me to match the new brand positioning.

Three Mirrors

The first product I've worked on is the book: Three Mirrors of Radical Honesty, for which I've designed the cover and the layout, inspired by the picture of three mirrors that Ife used in her TEDx talk. This shape of 3 mirrors has also been used to create a simplified icon for the framework, which is now used in other Ife's products as well.

Confidence Star

The product that Ife is most passionate about is The Confidence Star – a star-shaped mirror with positive affirmations designed to fight against common mental-health issues, especially in children, and to raise self-confidence. Many of them are exposed at schools, NHS facilities (UK National Health Service) and other public places.

Along with the updated website, I have revisited the design of the printed layer on the star. Apart from the updated logo, several improvements to the overall layout have been made:

1. the size of the text and the logo were reduced to leave more negative space, creating better visual focus on the words and more space for the reflection;
2. the font was changed to ALL CAPS to improve readability on the mirrored surface;
3. a QR code was added at the bottom to make it easier for people to learn more about the product when seeing it in public spaces.

Furthermore, a dedicated subdomain star.ifethomas.com was set up for this page to highlight its significance compared to other products in Ife's online store. It also serves as a future-proof platform-agnostic reference to the project, which is used in all external communications and encoded in the QR code.

Finishing touches

To complement the new brand identity of Ife Thomas, we've also updated the appearance of her social profiles, primarily on LinkedIn. We've also set up a dedicated Genesis Storytelling page with the same aesthetics to focus exclusively on the brand communication, including a selection of client showcases.

If you're interested to know more about my journey in photography, you can read the following article:

Photographer

Human connection and branding through portrait and still-life photography

Nazar ThinksNazar Bartosik