4 must-have branding elements your website needs
If you’re about to rebrand your business and update your website, there are some essential branding elements a website needs.
So, before you dive into a rebrand, check with your branding expert that these four elements listed below are included in your branding package.
#o1. Colour Palette
Most experienced designers will include at least one light colour, one dark colour and one accent colour in your colour palette. It’s worthwhile double checking to ensure this is included in your branding guide.
It’s also super important that your colours have suitable contrast. This is important for SEO, people with vision impairments and for creating a website that is kind and inclusive. Here’s a great article and video stepping you through how to check that your colour palette is ethical, inclusive and meets accessibility standards.
Having all light colours or all dark colours or all bright colours might work okay for social media graphics or physical print platforms, in most instances, it doesn’t work so great on websites. Having a good combination of light, dark and accent colours that complement each other (and your photography), with suitable colour contrast gives us more flexibility and thereby a bigger range of creative options for your website.
Your designer might also define primary and secondary colours.
Primary colours are used the majority of the time throughout your website – about 85-90%. They are used for things like background shading of different sections.
Secondary colours are your accent colours and are used much more minimally across the site – normally about 10-15%. They are often used on headings or buttons and also sometimes appear as pops of colours in your photography too.
If you need a hand with this, check out our kind and inclusive brand kits over this way.
A quick word on colours and your photography:
When we blend your branding elements with your stunning photography onto your website, we want these elements to fall in love with each other. That is, we want your branding colours and the colours in your photographs to complement each other. Most branding guides will contain an ‘image direction’ or ‘image mood’ section providing guidelines and examples of the types of imagery to select that will be cohesive with your branding and tell your brand story. Share this with your photographer so they understand the look and style that will best represent your brand. Choosing outfits or backdrops that have touches of your brand colours in them is a great idea.
Here’s a great freebie which might help with choosing outfits for your photoshoot.
#02. Font Pairing
Font pairing refers to the combination of font families that will be used for the headings and main body font across your site. Generally, your branding guide should include two, possibly three fonts and it will define how these fonts are to be used (i.e. for headings, main body text and buttons).
Believe it or not but fonts have a huge impact on the overall feel of your brand and website. And yet, font pairing is often overlooked or completely left out of the branding process. So this one is definitely worth checking with your branding expert that this step is included in your package.
I’ve shared more guidelines about font selections in this post here.
#03. Your Logo
Contrary to what you might have been told, your logo is actually the least important branding element needed for a website. In fact, it’s totally possible to build a website without a logo (but it’s not possible to build a website without colour palettes, typography and cohesive imagery).
So, if you’ve got the first two steps of this article covered, you’re probably good to go.
If you are getting a logo designed, then here’s some things to keep in mind.
Firstly, be sure to ask your designer for a version of your logo in png format on transparent background. This allows us to place the logo in coloured sections or overlay it onto images without any problems.
Secondly, having a couple versions of your primary logo is useful – both in horizontal and vertical. Like in our Frankie brand kit and our Florence + Jack brand kit.
By using a horizontal logo, it keeps the header narrow in height and therefore takes up less screen real estate, providing more room for the important things – that is the content on your pages
#04. Browser Icon
The browser icon is the little image that is displayed in the tab in your browser when someone is viewing your website. When people are flicking between multiple tabs on the screen, it’s your browser icon that will catch their eye and help them to return to your website.
Optional Extras
These branding elements are not must-haves and you most certainly could build a website without them. However, opting to have your branding expert create these additional bits for you, definitely can add an extra layer of special uniqueness to your website.
Logo variations – in addition to your primary logo, your designer might create a few variations of your logo which could include monograms, submarks, alternative script logos. These are great to use in situations such as: the footer of your website (such as we’ve done in our Earth one-week Squarespace website and in our Amber one-week Squarespace website), as watermarks, browser icons and email signatures. I’m in love with the submarks / brand icons that we’ve created in all of our brand kits.
Hand drawn illustrations or shapes– these are super fun to play with to add an extra spark to your website! Our Frankie Branding kit comes with six hand drawn illustrations, our KindFolk Branding kit comes with 11 and our Willlow Wellness brandking kit comes with three line drawings and three organic shapes.
Social media templates – to carry branding consistency across from your website onto all your other platforms, having branded social media templates can make all the difference (and save you a whole heap of time too!). All our branding kits come with social media templates which can easily be edited through Canva.
Need help creating your branding?
That’s what I’m here for! Check out our branding kits.