Sometimes a change of logo is just a change of logo. This one is a little different.
Over time, Jays n Dees has grown into something much broader than when we first started putting things online. The website now brings together our e-Store, software and digital products, crochet, clothing and gifts, the blog, and the many projects and experiments that find their way into our everyday lives.
The problem was that the way we presented Jays n Dees had not quite kept pace with what it had become.
So, over the past little while, we have been doing some fairly serious tidying up behind the scenes. Not only on the website, but across the Jays n Dees identity as a whole.
And now it is time to show you the result.
From jaysndees to Jays n Dees
The name itself has always been personal.
Jays n Dees comes from our family. It is not a name created by a marketing company, generated from a list of keywords, or designed around whatever happens to be popular this week. The Js and Ds have meaning to us, and as our family and the things we do have grown, the name has continued to fit.
What has changed is how we present it.
You may have known us online simply as jaysndees. That identity is not disappearing. You will still see it in places where a compact username or web address makes sense. Our website, for example, remains at jaysndees.com.au.
For the business itself, though, we are now presenting the name properly as Jays n Dees.
That small change makes a surprisingly big difference. It turns something that looked primarily like a username into the name of the family business it has gradually become.
A new logo with a lot more meaning
The most obvious part of the change is our new logo.
We wanted something that actually belonged to Jays n Dees rather than simply putting the name beside a generic symbol. The final design brings together an interlocking J and D, surrounded by a circular, orbit-like design with a collection of individual coloured dots.
There is a fair bit of personal meaning tucked into it.
The circle reflects connection, movement and the way the different parts of Jays n Dees keep coming back to the same centre. The individual dots reflect the family behind it – different people, personalities and stages of life, but all part of the same rather busy orbit.
There are a few little details in there whose complete meanings we are keeping to ourselves for now. Some things are more fun when their story gets told at the right time.
What matters publicly is that, for the first time, the logo feels like a proper representation of us rather than just a label attached to a website.
The website has been getting a clean-up too
The logo was only one piece of a much larger tidy-up.
Jays n Dees has accumulated a lot over the years. That is what happens when the same website becomes home to a shop, a blog, software projects, digital products, crochet patterns, family stories, experiments and whatever else we happen to be working on.
Eventually, adding one more thing here and another thing there starts making the whole place harder to understand.
So we stepped back and looked at the website from the perspective of somebody arriving for the first time.
The e-Store is now the main focus of the website, and the navigation has been simplified to make the different parts of the shop easier to find. Products are organised more clearly into areas such as Clothing and Gifts, Crochet, and Software and Digital Products, while the blog remains its own part of Jays n Dees for anyone who is here for the stories, experiments and occasional detours.
We have also been doing plenty of less-visible work – cleaning up older content, tidying product listings, improving descriptions, removing things that no longer belong, and generally making sure the site better represents what Jays n Dees is today.
There is still more to do. There probably always will be. A website attached to an active family and a growing collection of projects is never really “finished”.
But it now has a much clearer direction.
Jays n Dees is getting a little more social
This might be the part that feels strangest for us!
Jays n Dees has never been built around being constantly visible on social media. We are much more comfortable making things, building things, writing about things and experimenting behind the scenes than trying to turn every moment into a social media performance.
That is not going to change.
What is changing is that we now have a more consistent presence outside the website. Jays n Dees can now be found on Facebook and Instagram, alongside our existing Pinterest presence.
The intention is not to suddenly fill everybody’s feeds for the sake of posting something. We would rather use those channels to share new products, useful posts, project updates and the occasional glimpse of what is happening around Jays n Dees when there is actually something worth sharing.
In other words, we are becoming more social – just in our own way.
One name for a lot of different things
One of the challenges in redesigning Jays n Dees was deciding whether all of our different interests really belonged together.
After thinking about it, we realised that the variety is actually the point.
We develop software such as Screen Region Blockout and WooCommerce Bulk Product Variations. We create digital products. We have crochet projects and patterns. We sell physical items. The blog can wander from family systems and online income experiments to DIY projects, technology and learning our way through gold fossicking and processing.
On paper, that can look like a strange collection.
In real life, though, it makes perfect sense because that is what Jays n Dees has always been – a collection of things we genuinely make, use, learn, test or experience ourselves.
The new branding is not an attempt to make all of those things identical. It is intended to give them a common home.
What happens from here?
The refreshed Jays n Dees is not the end of something. It is really a better starting point for what comes next.
There are software projects under active development, existing products continuing to evolve, plenty more ideas waiting their turn, and more stories from everyday family life that will inevitably find their way onto the blog.
There is also another little girl preparing to join the family before too long, so life behind Jays n Dees certainly is not about to become quieter.
For now, though, we are happy to have reached a point where the website, logo and public identity finally feel like they belong to the same thing.
So, welcome to the refreshed Jays n Dees.
Same family. Same curiosity. Same tendency to have far too many projects happening at once.
Just a much better home for all of it.