Here's the thing: an intranet that doesn't feel branded is an intranet people won't use. The moment employees land on it, they make a split-second judgment. Does this belong to us? Is this maintained and trustworthy? Or does it feel like a generic IT project?
SharePoint gives you the tools to answer that first question with a confident yes. You don't need a design agency or custom development. All you need is a little consistency.
- Start with the basics. Your official brand colours applied thoughtfully across the site. Your logo positioned prominently but not so large it blocks the entire header. A readable font that actually works on screen—because plenty of beautiful brand fonts look terrible when rendered in 12pt on a browser. These aren't nice-to-haves; they're proof that someone cares about the experience.
- Then extend it everywhere. Most people never see your homepage. They live in department pages, document libraries and news articles. Your branding needs to feel like it belongs in all of those places, not just the landing page. Templates are your friend here. Build them for the content your team creates regularly (i.e. news, announcements, department pages). New pages start branded automatically. Nobody has to remember anything. It just works.
- Don't overlook the practical stuff. Colour contrast actually matters, especially for accessibility. Mobile responsiveness matters because your workforce isn't all sitting at desks. Clear navigation matters because employees should know where they are and how to get where they're going without playing a guessing game.
SharePoint's native theming tools handle all of this without needing IT to intervene on every change. Your communicators can own the visual consistency.
The real payoff? When your intranet feels like it belongs to your organisation, people actually engage with it. That's not vanity, that's ROI. 💁♀️
