Episode 43 of the Microsoft 365 Voice podcast features a modern branding discussion with SharePoint developer and Microsoft MVP Thomas Daly. Topics covered during this session include:

• Navigation is still key. Branding capabilities in SharePoint have evolved significantly in recent years, but navigation is still a critical design component. Effective use of SharePoint hub sites, an organizational Home site, and the soon-to-be-released Global Navigation component in the SharePoint App Bar will ensure your users can effectively find what they need.
• Stay within your “zones.” Thomas recommends keeping custom development inside the existing boxes (or zones) of your SharePoint Online site pages. Reaching outside these standard zones and manipulating modern pages can cause major difficulties (particularly as Microsoft releases cloud changes). And remember – any custom development you inject is yours to support.
• Think about the page scrolling impact of a customized SharePoint header and footer. The more you put into your custom header and footer, the more “squeezed” your SharePoint page becomes. Before you develop elaborate headers and footers, consider how the changes will impact your users. You don’t want to require extensive scrolling for them to see the main content on each of your SharePoint pages.
• Create a SharePoint theme for your site (and don’t alter the default SharePoint themes). You can generate a new theme on your SharePoint site. Thomas recommends focusing the theme on one of your company’s key colors. SharePoint page elements and web parts tie into the SharePoint theme, but it is difficult to have multiple custom colors featured equally.
• Don’t try and upload your own custom company font. This may seem like an elegant marketing choice, but trying to override the default Microsoft SharePoint fonts can cause significant page rendering issues. If you absolutely need to customize fonts, focus on web part titles and not the body font for your SharePoint pages.
• Be consistent. Thomas recommends using site templates and site scripts to drive consistency. You can also use SharePoint hub sites to push a consistent branded look and feel experience to associated sites.
• Check out the SharePoint Lookbook for site design ideas. See stunning visuals of example SharePoint sites and add the example sites to your tenant!

A huge thank you to Thomas Daly for joining us! Hope you enjoy the episode.

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