What Our Rebrand Taught Us About Honest Design

Last time, in our poetic leaf phase, we got all sentimental about growth and gravity. This time? The leaf hit the fan.

"If our laptops and drawing boards knew what was going to happen, they might've run away on day one — or at least begged for mercy."

Explore: The Expectation vs Reality

We thought this rebrand would be about pixels and palettes — easy, straightforward, a checklist. Instead, it became about patience, conviction, and hundreds of almost-but-not-yet moments: holding onto what we believe while everything else refuses to stay still.

The turning point came — ironically — when we weren't even trying to find one. We were on a so-called "break for inspiration" — aimless scrolling, really — when we stumbled upon a short clip of a leaf falling in slow motion. It didn't land gracefully; it looped, drifted, hesitated — almost like it couldn't decide whether to fall or dance.

Something about that moment felt like us. Growth, we realized, doesn't move in a straight line. It circles. It returns. It learns before it lands.

That clip — the one that would eventually inspire what we now call The Leaf moment — became the spark for everything that followed.

And, of course, our next problem. Since a thousand meme accounts had reposted the video, we were unable to find the original creator. We spent hours tracing it back through tags and re-uploads. Most of our team even suggested that maybe we should give up.

But we didn't. Because if we skip a simple act of giving credit, how can we call ourselves honest? Research is part of what we do — it's how we respect the people whose ideas help us grow and evolve.

Before the rebrand even began, we were already reminded of one truth:
"Growth doesn't always start with progress. Sometimes, it starts with persistence."

Vision: The Question That Anchored Us

When the laughter from the "leaf incident" finally settled, we found ourselves staring at a whiteboard full of circles, arrows, and half-erased ideas. Somewhere between the sketches and the sighs, one question kept surfacing — quietly at first, then louder:

What does it mean to design with honesty?

It wasn't a question we could answer with a color palette or a type choice. It lingered, poking at whether what we were creating still told the truth about who we were.

That question started to shape everything. Suddenly, every decision — from the logo to the color names — had to pass through it. Would this choice still feel true to us a year from now? Would it still sound like TUMBUH when we're tired, uncertain, or evolving?

We realized honesty in design isn't about minimalism or perfection — it's about alignment. That question became our anchor through the chaos, a compass reminding us: if honesty is our goal, what does that look like right now?

Sometimes it looked like patience. Sometimes, humility. Sometimes, hitting delete on an idea that looked great but didn't feel right.

We didn't always have answers, but having the right question kept us honest — and in hindsight, that was the beginning of clarity, not in design, but in intention.

Design with Honesty: A question that kept us honest.

Test: The Messy Middle

If our rebrand had a soundtrack, this would be the part with overlapping voices, keyboard clicks, and someone saying, "Wait, which version are we on again?"

We had a folder called final_final_v8 — and of course, another "final" added at the end of each of the ten subfolders — and somehow, it still wasn't final.

At some point — maybe the hundredth, or the thousandth — we realized the hard truth: growth rarely feels like progress. It felt like redoing, rethinking, and retrying — sometimes more than once.

There were weeks when we convinced ourselves we'd nailed it — that this logo, this color combo, this layout was the one. Then we'd put it next to the Circle of Growth philosophy and instantly go quiet. Something about it looked right, but didn't feel right.

So, we did what any honest team does: we started over.

That's how the cycle began — five logo candidates, two finalists, one decision we ignored. The hilarious thing? We ended up refining the option that didn't even make it through the vote, because someone in the team "wanted to make it work."

Democracy lost. Conviction won. But it was worth fighting for.

"We had a plan. Then we had five versions of that plan.
Kind of like Grey's Anatomy — renewed for another season every time we thought it was over."

The Logo: Where Everything Began

What started as a simple goal — to create something that felt unmistakably TUMBUH — turned into months of sketches, debates, and do-overs. It was meant to be our anchor, but it became the storm, because the more we tried to make it look right, the more we questioned what "right" even meant.

The Vision That Set the Rules

Long before this rebrand even crossed our minds, our Founder had a vision that refused to die:
"Instead of placing an icon beside the name, what if we could create a logo where the icon begins the name?"

Most logos pair a symbol and a wordmark — two parts living side by side. We wanted to merge them into one: a "T icon" that leads into "UMBUH," so the logo reads as a single form, not a pairing.

It sounded simple, but it wasn't. Years earlier, our Founder tried it and shelved the idea after hearing the same answers from every designer:
"That's not how other companies do it."
"Maybe — but the effort will be enormous."
And a few who simply tried… quietly gave up.

But TUMBUH was different. This time, there was no committee — just stubbornness, caffeine, and conviction. So, we tried again.

The rebrand didn't create this idea; it tested it. Every part of the logo — the T, the Circle, the Dots, the wordmark, even the descriptor — had to serve that single purpose. If it didn't, it changed. If it still didn't, it would have to go away.

The T: Where Conviction Met Compromise

We started by rebuilding the T from scratch. The original Poppins T was too sharp, too uniform, too polite — everything we weren't. We customized it by softening the bottom, rounding the top bar, and retaining one sharp edge as a nod to its earlier version, which once featured a small green arrow.

Without that arrow, the T looked unbalanced — but it also looked alive. It had weight, asymmetry, and honesty. It didn't need to sit beside the wordmark; it needed to lead it.

That's how the T became both icon and anchor — not decoration, but the first letter of a story that had been waiting years to be told.

The Circle and the Dots: When Geometry Started Arguing

We debated it for weeks. One side swore the Circle should exist; the other swore it shouldn't. But the vision demanded continuity — something that orbited, returned, and never truly ended. So, the Circle stayed.

That's when the arguments really started. We tried hundreds of versions — half-open, three-quarters, off-center — each one slightly wrong in a different way. The Circle couldn't choke the T or collide with where "UMBUH" would sit later. It needed room to breathe — and so did we.

When it finally worked, we filled it with Deep Cloud — quiet, soft, almost invisible. Not a badge, but an orbit.

Then came the Dots. At first, they followed a small–mid–large pattern. It looked clever; it felt smug. So we made them equal, which worked — until we tried to form a subtle "G" for the hidden TGC easter egg.

That's when philosophy met physics.
By rule, the Dots should follow our brand essence sequence — Coral for Human, Violet for Clever, and Emerald for Unconventional — as defined in our Brand Book. But when we placed them that way, they looked static, sitting awkwardly at the Circle's open end instead of flowing with it.

So we broke our own rule. We flipped Coral and Emerald to make the Dots follow the Circle's motion instead of the manual. The result felt right — alive, balanced, and true to the rhythm of growth. The Brand Book got an update later, but the logo taught the lesson first.

And in that moment, the logo stopped being geometry. It became gravity.

The T, The Circle, and The Dots

The Wordmark and Descriptor: The Great Alignment Saga

Once the logogram (T, Circle, Dots) was complete, we tucked the wordmark "UMBUH" into the open space between the Dots and the Circle. It almost worked — until we remembered the descriptor.

That's where precision met pain. We resized the Dots and discovered that when the full logo height hit 80px, the Dots practically vanished. So, we tightened their spacing, adjusted the scale, and kept iterating until they stayed visible down to 60 px. Anything smaller, we'd just pretend they were there — somewhere.

We adjusted the wordmark again, and this time, half of it aligned perfectly with the T's bar. For a brief moment, it looked effortless — which, of course, meant it wasn't.

For anyone with a precise eye (or a mild case of OCD, lol), the placement still feels a little off. And yet, the spacing between every letter is exact. It reads perfectly as TUMBUH, just not perfectly balanced. Then again, nothing ever truly is. Even growth moves in uneven cycles — that's what keeps it alive.

Then came the descriptor — Growth Consultant. It sounded simple enough. You know the drill: "Just align it to the far-right edge of the wordmark, scale it for clarity, make sure it's readable even at sixty pixels tall." Yeah. Sure. Easy.

But of course, nothing about this logo stayed simple for long. The Dots and the descriptor fought back — even if they didn't have arms.

So we did what we always do: ignored the rulebook and trusted the rhythm. We nudged the wordmark, descriptor, and Dots pixel by pixel until the silence in the room lasted at least five seconds.

That's when the T finally earned its role as the anchor — the only thing we didn't move… for at least an hour.

The Final Nudge

When everything else finally clicked, the T still looked trapped — too close to the Dots, too far from air. Shrinking the Dots wasn't an option, so we nudged the T a few pixels to the left, just enough to breathe.

Visually, it looked off-center against the Circle. Philosophically, it was perfect. Because honesty often lives just a few pixels away from perfection.

In the end, we didn't create a logo — we fulfilled an old vision. Every line, color, and argument circled back to the same belief: growth isn't about changing what we believe; it's about refining it until it stands.

It looks imperfect — until you measure it.

The Color Chaos

If the logo had its debates, the colors had their full-blown identity crisis. Turns out, picking colors for a brand about growth was like trying to bottle emotion.

Palette v1.0 — The Optimistic Start

We began with the classics: Obsidian Navy, Creative Coral, Growth Green, Amethyst Violet, and Deep Charcoal. Solid. Respectable. "Corporate but creative." For a week, we thought we'd nailed it — until the WCAG gods said no. Coral failed contrast; Green looked too literal. "Growth Green" suddenly felt like it belonged to a garden center, not a philosophy.

So we started again.

Palette v2.0 — The Great Rebrand of the Rebrand

Creative Coral became Luminous Coral — brighter, clearer, actually visible on screen. Growth Green evolved into Emerald Truth — deeper, more honest, less chlorophyll. Celestial Aqua replaced Navy as the color of Explore, Golden Ember joined the table for Act, and Obsidian Navy took a quiet step down to the base palette.

It should've stopped there. But of course, it didn't.

Days later, Coral still failed contrast tests. Someone sighed, "Okay, that's it. No more Coral changes. Please." We agreed — partly out of conviction, mostly out of survival. It wasn't perfect, but it was honest enough to stay.

At this point, we had balance. Hierarchy. Logic. We called it Palette v2.0 — a warning sign we'd named it like software.

Palette v3.0 — The Logic Expansion Pack

Then logic took over. If Frost replaced white and Charcoal replaced black, shouldn't they both be text-only? If Eggshell mirrored Navy, shouldn't Cloud have a darker twin?

So we built a fully mirrored system — light to dark, emotion to anchor, human to structure.

That's when Steel Grey didn't get the memo. Too light to be dark, too dark to be light. We replaced it with Cinder Slate, the darker half of Cloud. Finally, the hierarchy clicked.

For the first time, every color had a role and a reason. We looked at each other (virtually, through too many tabs) and said: "Okay, this is final." You can probably guess what happened next.

Palette v3.1 — The Emerald Incident

It started with a post — just a layout using Coral, Violet, and Emerald. Something looked off.

"Why do the Core and Deep Emeralds look… the same?" Silence, then panic — the gap between Soft and Deep Emerald was uneven, throwing off the hierarchy. And since Soft Emerald lived everywhere — overlays, accents, dots — fixing it meant touching almost every file.

In the middle of prepping the reveal, we opened the palette again. We couldn't change the core Emerald without starting over, so we rebuilt the Soft and Deep shades around it, hue by hue, until it finally felt right.

It was an emergency surgery, and yes, it hurt. Someone joked, "At least Coral's enjoying the drama from the sidelines." No one laughed. We were too busy fixing hex codes.

What It Taught Us

Before, our colors looked fine on their own. But the moment we put them together, they started arguing. It took chaos to realize: design isn't just about color harmony — it's about coexistence.

Growth, like color, only makes sense in context. You can't balance everything in isolation. Sometimes, the only way to find harmony is to let the differences show — honestly, imperfectly, together.

It only looked right when it finally worked together.

Act: The Final Alignment

After all the circles, debates, and color chaos, there came a point where we had to stop asking questions and start deciding. That's when everything began to align—not by accident, but by choice.

The moment of alignment didn't happen in a meeting or during a late-night design session. It came quietly, almost invisibly, as we began acting on conviction rather than preference. We stopped fixing what didn't need fixing and started trusting the system we had built. Every color, dot, and letter had been tested to exhaustion. Now it was time for them to breathe together.

The logo, the framework, the philosophy—everything that once felt separate—finally started to speak the same language. The Circle was no longer just a shape; it became motion. The Dots stopped being decorative; they became rhythm. The T, once a single stubborn letter, finally stood where it belonged: as the anchor holding everything in place—the wordmark and descriptor filled in the voice, turning the whole system from design to identity.

That's when the work stopped being theoretical. We weren't sketching ideas anymore; we were living them. The logo wasn't a new face for TUMBUH—it was a new way of standing behind what we say. We began updating our decks, templates, posts, and documents, and it all fell into place in a way it never had before. Not because it was prettier or cleaner, but because it finally fit.

Acting wasn't the loudest part of the process, but it was the most defining. It's where ideas stopped orbiting and began to land. Growth, we realized, isn't just reflection—it's also movement. The alignment wasn't a single step; it was the rhythm that comes when every decision, big or small, starts to follow the same beat.

And that's why this stage mattered most. It wasn't where we stopped experimenting; it was where we finally understood what to keep—and what to let go.

Every version was right for its time — until the philosophy caught up.

Reflect: What We Learned About Growth Itself

After the logo files were finalized, the color system locked, and the website updated, we expected to feel finished. Instead, what came next wasn't closure—it was clarity. The kind that doesn't show up in the design files or the style guide. It shows up in the quiet questions you start asking afterward: Why did this take so long? What made us hesitate? What did we almost forget to honor along the way?

Those questions became the real work of reflection. And the answers revealed something we hadn't seen clearly until now: this entire process was never just about identity—it was about integrity.

Growth doesn't always feel like progress. Most of the time, it's redoing, unlearning, trying again with a little more honesty. Clarity rarely arrives as a flash of inspiration; it creeps in, disguised as exhaustion, until everything heavy begins to make sense. Truth doesn't grow from confidence — it grows from persistence.

Through this rebrand, we rediscovered the three truths we've always believed in:
Growth is universal. Growth is cyclical. Growth is honest.
We just had to prove them to ourselves first.

Universal, because even the smallest parts of the process—one color code, one curve, one late-night revision—echoed the same principles that guide how we grow as a company and as people. Cyclical, because we kept circling back to where we started, realizing that every "new idea" was really just a deeper version of an old truth. And honest, because nothing about this process was easy, linear, or instantly beautiful. Growth rarely is.

Looking back, what we designed wasn't a new face for TUMBUH—it was a mirror. The rebrand simply reflected what had already been growing beneath the surface: the conviction that our work, our voice, and our philosophy had to align not just visually, but ethically. We couldn't talk about honest growth without first practicing it ourselves.

Maybe that's what reflection is — not reinvention, but recognition. We didn't become someone new; we simply gave shape to what was already growing. The rebrand made those values visible.

The rebrand didn't end when we launched it.
It ended when we started looking back at what it taught us.

Closing: Growth Comes Full Circle

Every color, every dot, every debate, every late-night "final_final" version was simply the process reminding us of what we already believed: that growth is not a straight line, and clarity is rarely instant. The process didn't make us different; it made us truer to ourselves.

And maybe that's the real circle of growth. We explore, we test, we act, we reflect — and then, without noticing, we find ourselves right back where we began. Only this time, we understand it better.

This rebrand was never about a logo.
It was about alignment — between what we believe, what we create, and how we show it to the world. That's what makes growth practical, meaningful, and lasting. That's what makes it TUMBUH.

"Growth doesn't end when you arrive somewhere new. It begins when you finally recognize where you've been."

The circle closed, the colors calmed down, and peace returned.
For about six minutes.

Next Stop: Part 3: The Copy That Rewrote Us.