Cynthia Oswald

Surface Design, Fine Art + Branding for Creatives

brand cheat sheet

Ways to create visual hierarchy on your website

website success tips

Visual hierarchy and how to use it effectively on your website

Today’s tip is about creating a visual hierarchy on your website. I want you to be thinking about what happens when you land on your website homepage or any other corresponding page secondary page. How is it that your eye moves through the page? Sometimes it’s really hard to look at that when you’re the one building your own site. I always recommend starting with wireframes for this purpose. If you’re struggling to create a visual hierarchy on your own site, I suggest taking a look at websites that you like to frequent and taking note of how they create visual hierarchy. How are they creating balance and how are you as the viewer moving through the page naturally? 

Here are a few things you can do to create this on your own site:

  1. You can use images and color blocking as a way to create a visual hierarchy by breaking the page into sections. It allows your eye to focus on different locations. 
  2. You can also utilize scale in your imagery and copy. Creating standard looks for headlines, subheads, and body copy is just going to help people understand where they should look first, second, and third, and finally where they should land. 
  3. Finally be thinking about that call to action and how does that fit into the visual hierarchy? This is important because your call to action is what you want people to gravitate toward on your website. 

A visual hierarchy works quickly and subconsciously to guide users through your content. We just look at a page or a composition and we’re naturally moving through the information/imagery. Again, try to take a look at some sites that you enjoy visiting and you’ll start to see what’s working and how they’re doing it. Then you can take some ideas you pulled from looking at those other sites and begin implementing them into your own brand visuals. 

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Creating a Style Guide

Website Success Tips

Creating your brand cheat sheet

I am excited to share some important things you want to be considering when it comes to the visuals you have on your website and something I always create for my clients is a brand cheat sheet (also known as a style guide). 

A style guide is a cheat sheet for yourself that helps you stay consistent and cohesive throughout your website and your communication platforms. Examples of this would be when building an email template, building or editing different aspects of your website, or when creating social media graphics. In addition to creating brand cohesion, having a brand cheat sheet allows you to work so much faster! You aren’t wasting time trying to figure out what color you used last time, what font did I use as my body font, etc. 

Brand cheat sheets are pretty simple to make, I would suggest using Canva or Adobe Express to make one for your business if you don’t have one already. Listed below are some things to include in your brand cheat sheet if you are creating your own.

What to include on your website brand cheat sheet

Hex Colors

What are hex colors? They are color codes that have a hashtag followed by a combination of six digits (can be letters or numbers or both!). For example, one of my hex codes is #3C462D — the super secret code for the dark green in my branding. 

How do I find out what the hex codes are for my brand colors? If you have the color makeup for your brand colors in CMYK or RBG you can convert to HEX here: https://g.co/kgs/Tynft2

I would suggest having 3-5 hex colors for your brand. You should be able to use these hex codes throughout your email marketing, social media, and website seamlessly.

Fonts

It is always nice to outline the fonts you are going to come across throughout your branding. Having two to four font treatments gives you some great variation to make your brand stand out. The two types of fonts you want to make sure you include are a headline font and body copy font and make sure they flow well together.

Logos

All variations of your logo—horizontal, vertical, square, emblems, one-color, full-color, etc.

Brand Imagery

Images you want to show alongside your logo. You want these to be cohesive with your brand and serve as examples of what type of imagery you want to use and want people to associate with your brand.

I hope the tips above help you create a quick style guide that serves as a catalyst for brand cohesion in your business if you do not have one already.