How to Create a Strong Brand Identity as a Web Designer

Experienced web designers with a steady client base carefully curate their brand identity to reflect their target audience, scope of work, and unique approach to design. The most successful web designers have a thoughtful, well-designed brand that’s unique to their style and services offered. 

Why does brand identity matter for web designers?

As a web designer, your brand identity is often the first thing a prospective client evaluates before reaching out. When it's cohesive and clearly communicates your expertise, it builds credibility before a single conversation takes place.

The building blocks of brand identity

Before embarking on any branding efforts, it’s helpful to understand who your brand is and what it represents. Your brand purpose offers a consistent experience with your business, increasing credibility and trust with clients.

Brand identity encompasses four core tenets: your values, mission, positioning, and voice.

• Values

  Values guide every decision that your web design business makes. When defining your brand values, consider what actions your business can take to better the world your target audience engages with.

• Mission

  Mission is the reason your web design business exists beyond building Squarespace websites. It’s the specific change you’re trying to create for your clients—whether that’s helping small business owners look credible online, making ecommerce accessible for independent makers, or giving service providers a digital presence that converts using integrations like Acuity Scheduling. Your mission defines why your work matters. It separates you from every other designer with a portfolio and basic knowledge of Squarespace, driving your ideal clients to choose you specifically. Read more about establishing a values-aligned brand mission.

• Positioning

  Brand positioning defines where your web design business sits in the market and in the minds of your ideal clients. To effectively position your brand, you need to find your “secret sauce”—the unique combination of skills, aesthetics, and values that makes your services stand out from the competition. If shifting design trends or market changes leave your business feeling misaligned, reevaluate your key strengths. Clarify what you do extremely well and what you don’t do at all. By confidently refining your niche and your “why,” you can reposition your brand to attract new business without losing the trust of clients who already champion your work.

• Voice

  Brand voice encapsulates the specific ways you communicate with your clients—think descriptions on your website, email marketing, and personal interactions. Choose words and images that fit your brand values and mission, and align how you share your messages with your brand image.

How to develop a web design brand identity

Your brand identity is built on self-knowledge. Before you design a logo or update your website, it helps to get clear on who you are, who you serve, and what makes your work different. Work through the questions below to surface the insights that will shape future brand decisions.

1. Why did you start your web design business, and what did you want it to mean for the clients you served?

2. Who’s your ideal client or niche, and what’s the specific problem they have before they find you?

3. What type of work do you do best, and what type of work genuinely energizes you?

4. What do you offer that most other web designers can’t, or won’t?

5. If a past client described your work to a colleague in three words, what would you want those words to be?

6. What industries, causes, or communities does your business feel most aligned with?

7. What visual references, designers, or aesthetics consistently inspire your own work?

8. What kinds of projects or clients do you actively choose not to take on?

9. What’s a client outcome you’re most proud of, and what does it reveal about your brand’s value?

10. Where do you want your web design business to be in three years, and what kind of brand would attract the clients who get you there?

See how seasoned Circle partners answer these questions and more.

Once you’ve worked through these prompts, your Squarespace site is where that clarity becomes visible in your homepage copy, portfolio case studies, and aesthetic decisions you make across every page.

How to design compelling assets to support your brand identity

The content and visuals of brand collateral should be manifestations of your brand identity. Consider the following as you develop your brand identity:

Design a memorable logo

Your logo is your brand identity distilled intoone symbol. It should embody your brand’s values and be simple and memorable. Select up to four colors to represent your business, which you should also use on your website. Avoid trendy design elements, creating something that’s timeless and unique to your brand identity. Learn more about designing a brand logo.

Build a conversion-friendly website

As a web designer, your own website is an important proof point to visitors, reflecting your brand identity clearly and consistently. Choose visuals that represent your brand identity or showcase past work, and select typography that’s easy to read and cohesive to your brand. In Squarespace, you can define your brand’s fonts and color palette once through the global site styles, keeping every page consistent without adjusting each element individually.

Add your logo to the site header and a browser icon for quick visual recognition. Ensure your site is simple to navigate and that your services are easily accessible. Circle partners can customize site blocks with animations and transforms to further express brand identity and create a more immersive browsing experience. They can also use mobile overrides on compatible blocks to ensure sites are optimized for view across devices. Learn more about Squarespace’s suite of pro features and how to build a powerful web design portfolio on Squarespace. 

Pro tip: When you set out to build your personal web design portfolio site, you can save time by starting with Squarespace’s Adri template, which is designed and optimized for web designers. You can experiment with site and page layouts without switching templates, and quickly lay out your site to see how its content and visuals work together.

Create a style guide

As you make web design branding decisions, document the specifics of each, such as color choices, approved fonts, and logo variants. Create a style guide to keep your design decisions grounded. Plus, if you run an agency, your style guide can help your team and business partners properly convey your brand identity.

Build brand-aligned email campaigns

Communication is part of your brand identity. With Squarespace Email Campaigns, you can distribute brand-aligned email marketing campaigns right in your Squarespace site. Email Campaigns adopts your site styles so each email matches your brand identity. For more tips on making the most of email marketing, read our pro guide to Email Campaigns.

Brand identity checklist

Follow this checklist to audit your web design brand identity and ensure it matches your vision and target audience:

• Mission and values. Define your mission and identify your values. Make these clear throughout your site—on your homepage and about page.
• Target audience. Review your website visuals and copy through the eyes of your target clients. Update anything that doesn’t reflect who you want to attract.
• Value proposition. Articulate your unique aesthetic and show off your web design skills across your site, particularly on your homepage, services page, and about page.
• Brand voice. Read your website, social profiles, and client communications side by side to confirm your tone is consistent, professional, and authentic across all three.
• Logo and visual identity. Confirm your logo is high-resolution and applied consistently across all your brand touchpoints, including your website and browser icon, emails, social media, and any print marketing materials.
• Brand-aligned assets. Define your fonts, colors, and imagery as a system, and lock them in through Squarespace’s global site styles so every page stays on brand. Then, compile these choices in a living style guide that’s readily accessible to you and your team.
• Client-facing touchpoints. Review your proposals, onboarding emails, and invoices to confirm they reflect your brand. Squarespace Invoicing applies your site-wide styles to invoices automatically so your billing experience matches the rest of your brand without extra work.
• Cross-platform consistency. Audit every channel where prospective clients encounter your brand, from your website and social profiles to email marketing. Confirm your visuals and voice are consistent throughout.
• Content. Audit your portfolio case studies, blog posts, and email marketing campaigns to verify each contributes to a cohesive story about your unique web design brand.

Craft a strong web design brand identity on Squarespace

A strong brand identity is the foundation your web design business is built on, not a finishing touch. Clients form an impression of your work before they ever contact you, and that impression is shaped almost entirely by how your brand shows up online.

Squarespace gives you the tools to make that presence count: a portfolio that reflects your aesthetic, campaigns that extend your voice, and a site that converts the clients you actually want to work with.

Discover ways to leverage your web design skills to develop your client’s brand identity.

This article was originally published on September 9, 2020. It has since been updated.

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