SharePoint Site Branding

It is possible to quickly alter the appearance and feel of your intranet site in the contemporary SharePoint experience to better reflect the brand of your business or organization. In most cases, you may alter the navigation, colors, and logo without inputting a single line of code. You can apply branding to a single site, a collection of sites, or every site in your company.

Overview

Microsoft offers multiple ways to design and brand intranet sites selectively or organization wide. With the new site branding functionalities, it is now possible for site owners to add their own fonts and themes. Through the new brand center service, IT administrators can establish company-wide fonts and themes, and all SharePoint sites will display them. In addition, you have possibilities to change the look of your site header, footer, navigation and more. Nowadays you have all the tools to make your intranet users feel at home.

Site Branding

Your corporate style and brand can be reflected on your intranet site by creating and managing brand options as a site owner.

Through site branding it is possible to add themes or new font packages to your site. It is also possible to copy from another site where you have at least read access.

Site branding may be accessed in the upper right corner of your SharePoint site under Settings. To add a distinctive image of your organization and brand to your site, you can utilize the site branding tool in conjunction with your organization’s branding.

Note: Site branding will not override the settings for a site associated with a hub.

1.    Create new themes:

The ability to design and oversee your own theme for your sites and experiences is brought about by site branding. These developed site-specific themes will be available for site owners to choose from in Change the Look.

1. On your target site, select Settings and then Site branding > Theme.

2. Select + New theme to start the theme designer experience.

3. Choose your preferred colors for the Primary, Text, Background and Accent colors of your theme.

• • Primary color: The primary color is central to your brand identity and personality.  This color is used predominantly in your sites and experiences.
  • Text color: This color is used for the text in your experiences. Consider how this color will work with your selected primary and background colors.
  • Background color: The background color is used behind your text and images to display all the content in your sites and experiences.
  • Accent color: This color is used sparingly to complement your primary color and enhance your content.
    Accent colors are mainly used on text overlays and shading. Example in text over image colored in red:

Note: Your organization may have provided a set of predefined brand colors that you can utilize to create your theme:

4. The Dark theme setting for your theme.  This setting should be considered if you have customized your background color in your theme.  If you have used a light color for your background color of your theme this will remain off. If you have used a dark or darker color for the background color of your theme you should turn this setting on.

Note: The dark theme will automatically modify the text and other menu elements to feature lighter colors for better visibility. This option is mainly used for themes with dark backgrounds.

5. To finalize the theme creation process, assign a distinctive name to your theme and proceed to save it. This designated name will be visible within the ‘Change the look’ interface.

A concise preview of the created site theme’s appearance will be available for your review. It is imperative to confirm that your site adheres to all accessibility guidelines and maintains sufficient contrast levels.

2.    Font Packages:

Customizing your website with your own font bundle is another benefit of site branding.  Only the website where they were produced will have these font packages available for site owners to choose from in Change the Look.

Note: Only those tenants who have had the SharePoint brand center set up and have access to custom fonts can enjoy the font package experience.

Note: Only fonts specified through the SharePoint brand center can be used to build font packages.

1. On your site, select Settings   and then Site branding > Font packages.
2. Select + New font package to launch the font package designer experience.
   • Step 1: Use the font picker to specify font families for display and content text. You may select up to two unique font families, with the flexibility to assign the same font family to both display and content components, if desired.

1. • Step 2: Select a font family and a font style for each one of the four font slot mappings: Title, Headline, Body and Interactive. Make use of the preview function to see the changes
   • Step 3: Give your font package a name, then you can preview it in various settings. When you apply this special font package name to your site, it will show up in the “Change the look” experience.

All created font packages can be seen and modified under Site branding:

3.    Copy site branding:

In addition to the capability of generating unique brand assets within the site branding interface, Microsoft is now providing a feature that enables users to replicate the branding of another site and implement it on their own.

Note: The functionality to search for and replicate site branding across various geographical locations is not available currently.

Note: Visitor access to the target site by the owner initiating the copy process is mandatory to copy the branding assets.

1. Select Copy from another site to begin the copy process.

2 .To initiate the copying process, first identify the source website. This can be done either by entering relevant keywords related to the site’s title into the search field or by directly inputting the site’s URL.

​​​​​​​After conducting the search, carefully select the desired site from the results. Prior to proceeding, examine the preview to ensure that the correct website has been chosen.

3. As the site is selected and displayed, every available site branding will be shown in the Theme or Font package sections below of the site selection picker.

4. Choose the specific branding elements that you intend to duplicate and then assign them new names according to your preferences. The name you type during this process will be directly reflected in the site’s branding menu and will remain unchanged within the ‘Change the look’ interface unless explicitly modified.

5. Click on “Save copy” to initiate the copy process into your target site branding experience.

Change the look and apply your theme

You can apply your theme and font packages through the “change the look” settings. Change the look settings are located under Settings  in the top right corner of your SharePoint site.

Team sites allow for modifications to the visual theme and header elements. In contrast, communication sites provide a more extensive range of customization functionalities, enabling users to adjust navigation structures and implement a site-wide footer.

The created themes appear under “From this site” after clicking on Theme:

Created font packages will also appear under Font:

Newly created font packages are displayed under “From this site”:

Conclusion

With the new site branding capabilities, it is easy for site owners to personalize the look and feel of SharePoint sites as desired. Use your organization colors and fonts to imprint a lasting presence on your users and showcase your brand.