Brand consistency in corporate website design

A website can be one of the most visited places a brand has. People find you through a recommendation, a search or a social post, and the first place they click is your site. So a site that looks cut off from the rest of the brand means the brand looks inconsistent exactly where it’s most visible.

Why websites get treated as a separate project

Because sometimes that’s how they’re done. The identity is designed by one team, and the site is built by another, months later. The site team has a few logo files and maybe a colour code. Everything else they interpret for themselves. The site may well look good, but it won’t speak the same language as the business card and the packaging.

In the way we work, a website is an application of the identity system, not a separate design. That’s how we describe web experiences in our services too: websites built on the same system as the rest of the brand, with speed and mobile use treated as part of the design.

How the system carries over

Every decision in the brand guidelines finds a counterpart on the site.

Typeface. The typeface in the guidelines becomes the site’s only typeface. Weights for headlines, text and buttons follow the hierarchy the guidelines set.

Colour. The primary colour, supporting colours and accent keep the same roles on the site. The accent goes on buttons or important links, the supporting colours on backgrounds.

The mark. The logo doesn’t have to sit only in the corner of the page. The mark’s shapes can become part of the site’s visual language.

Voice. The words on the site are part of the identity too. However the brand talks on social media and in presentations, it should talk the same way on the site.

Example: our own site

We built kischla.com on our own identity system. The site’s only typeface is Lexend, from our identity. Its one accent colour is the same red. In the homepage section “Three shapes, one system”, the three parts of our K (the upright bar, the chevron and the full stop) sit alongside three words: Structure, Strategy, Design. On desktop, the parts come together as you scroll. It starts from the same idea as our first three Instagram posts.

There are invisible decisions too. Fonts and images load from our own server, and the site has no analytics, advertising or third-party tracking code. That’s a decision about visitors’ privacy, but it also fits the “not cluttered” promise the brand makes.

Example: Taze Sepet’s website draft

Taze Sepet’s brand guidelines end with a website draft. Taze Sepet is an online grocery, so the site is its shop.

In the draft, the homepage opens with a wide, naturally lit image, followed by category circles, “basket of the week” product cards and the brand story. The interface rules come from the guidelines: primary buttons in Fresh Green and fully rounded, secondary buttons outlined; product cards with an 18 px corner radius; badges like “new harvest” and “bestseller” in Basket Red. The whole interface uses Alegreya Sans, with ExtraBold headlines and Regular text. On mobile, categories scroll sideways and products sit in two columns.

None of these rules were invented just for the site. Each one is a decision about colour, type or shape from the guidelines, translated to a screen.

Questions to ask when you build a site

• Is the site’s typeface the same as the one in the guidelines?
• Are the colours used in the same roles, or have new colours appeared on the site?
• Does the copy on the site sound like the brand everywhere else?
• Does the site show the same brand on mobile?
• When a new page gets added, which rules will the person building it look at?

Corporate website design is one of our services. If you’d like to think together about how a site could speak with the rest of your brand, get in touch.