Creating a house style is an important part of a website. Often people refer to creating a 'brand', instead of a 'house style'. There is a difference and in this will cover house styling, without logo design, marketing and other brand related elements.

1. Creating a ‘House Style’ for your Website
Creating a house style is an important part of a website. Often people refer to creating a ‘brand’, instead of a
‘house style’. There is a difference and in this article will cover house styling, without logo design, marketing
and other brand related elements.
The house style should be either taken from your existing material to create a familiar and recognisable look,
else you should create a house style from scratch to use not just on your website, but elsewhere such as email
signatures, brochures etc. You don’t need to design a logo to put together a house style. So whether it is a set
signature layout including fonts, colours, links etc or making sure your blog posts appear similar in style to your
site pages, house style guidelines should be adopted by all involved.
You don’t need to be a business to use a ‘house style’. Having a house style for your website and then using
across email, forums, press releases and other communication methods can help you build a stronger internet
presence.
Putting together a palette
Colour are an important aspect of any website and for many websites there are some easy colours you can
choose. Blue for plumbers, green for gardeners and red for tax people (only joking!), are examples of colours
associated with a business sector. Also using colours associated with your logo will help create a stronger
presence (and help with branding activities).
Recommended reading:
http://www.neogain.com/3-ways-to-help-you-choose-the-right-colours-for-your-website-template-design
Fonts
It is best when possible to use just one font on a website, but at a stretch two can be made to work. Sometimes
the font used for the content is the same font as used in the company logo. Though often a font used for a logo
isn’t suitable for the main website content.
It is believed the most widely hated font is comic-sans and there is even a ‘Ban Comic Sans’ website:
http://bancomicsans.com/main/ So as you can imagine choosing the correct font that appeals to a wide audience
is important.
You can also use JavaScript to embed TrueType and OpenType fonts into your website, but this can led to
unnecessary complication and issues, and if used perhaps best only for titles i.e. article titles, widget titles etc.
Recommended reading:
http://www.neogain.com/using-non-standard-fonts-in-your-website
http://www.neogain.com/which-fonts-to-use-in-your-template-theme-design

2. Layout
From a company letterhead to the website template / theme a successful house style shows key features or
similarities across all documents and presentation material, including the website design.
Essentially the aim is to make familiarity of the organisation easier no matter what someone is viewing, which
yes is also a strong component of ‘branding’.
Recommended reading:
http://www.neogain.com/how-many-columns-should-your-template-have
Graphics
This is where branding can comes into play and it should be mentioned in this article, but even if you are not
creating a logo for your website, using the same colours in a favicon, website theme, email signature and other
online graphics will help create a stronger ‘image’.
Recommended reading:
http://www.neogain.com/website-template-design-tips
http://www.neogain.com/website-design-working-with-old-logo-images
http://www.neogain.com/how-to-create-a-favicon-file-for-you-website
Hire Neogain
Naturally a good way to move forward is to hire web design experts. Neogain are website experts covering
administration, design, marketing and writing. We know how all the elements of a professional website should
come together and design is second nature to us.
We are based in the United Kingdom, but have clients across the globe as well as in the UK. So when it comes
to looking for website help and hiring a professional and experienced firm, you should contact us.
Want to hire a web designer? Click here to request a proposal.