My 12-year old asked me for five 1-hour Adobe lessons for his birthday last month. So obviously, I delivered!
Our lesson this weekend was on editing photos in Photoshop and I showed him a few practical ways to edit photos, plus all the cool filters you can use. He instantly loved the stained glass filter and applied it in various intensities to five photos he took on our vacation to Costa Rica earlier this year. He was instantly sold on this filter being the best tool in Photoshop.
Are you following your brand guide or going rogue?
This got me thinking – often when we discover a cool trick we want to use it everywhere. If you’re 12 and want to make your vacation photos unique and special, this may work out really well.
If you’re a business owner and you go off on a tangent chasing a cool effect, you may be entering the land of confusing inconsistent branding.
I’ve seen business owners trying to add flair to their websites with subtle effects like drop shadows or louder effects like graphic shapes or animations – when these effects are not part of their brand. In some cases adding these elements devalues the brand.
This could start to erode the trust you are building with your audience (if they expect you to show up one way, and now you’re showing up differently in your branding) and in the worst cases it can scare away the people who were one step away from buying. Especially if you are selling a higher ticket offer or thinking about increasing your pricing. People are watching.
What are some common issues we see?
Let’s take a look at some of the common issues we see. See any of these on your website? If you do, ask yourself (or better yet, ask your designer) if they are on brand.
- Colours outside of your brand palette
- Inconsistent fonts (or ‘fun’ fonts added without any real purpose)
- Gradients used without intention (loud gradients, too many gradients)
- Drop shadows and other text effects that affect readability on the screen
- Adding underlines to text for emphasis (when you should only be using underlines for links)
- Buttons and links that don’t have a noticeable hover state
- Inconsistent lighting or filters on photos
- Photos that don’t feel cohesive with the rest of the photos on your site (the lowest quality image on you site is the one that sets the tone of the site)
- Not enough contrast between text and the background (especially text over an image or gradient background)
- Text as part of an image (is it still legible when smaller, like on mobile?)
- Animations on every element when the screen is loading
- Slow website loading times from heavy animation, video, and large image usage
- Cluttered layouts that don’t have breathing room between sections
Does this mean your website needs to be boring? Absolutely not! You can have a fun and playful brand, a loud and bold brand, or an edgy and energetic brand and still keep things looking professional and consistent. If bold gradients are part of your brand, then embrace them. But make sure any flair is part of the strategic direction of your brand, and not just there because it caught your eye and you decided to go rogue.
Next step: See if you have added any flair to your website that is unnecessary or off-brand. Think about what you can replace the culprit with that is more on-brand and elevated. Let us know how it goes!
