SharePoint has many different options to apply (custom) theme colours. But have you ever wondered: just what is the difference between applying these colours via Site branding and the actual Brand Center?
In my line of work, I often get that question, mostly nicely paired with its partner in crime: “Why can’t I apply font themes, it is greyed out!”. So, here’s a preface to my little blog, where I’m gonna do my best to explain these differences along with a few nice examples and pretty pictues. Cause, images say more than a thousand words.
First of: Site branding is the one that most site owners find and use, cause, well…it’s there isn’t it. Right there at the top right corner under “settings”. It is called “Site Branding”, quite similar to “Brand Center” or at least, similar enough that I get why this causes some confusion. For… it is not the Brand Center.
Site branding is the local theme customization. It’s scope is, just like with the familiar theme colours, only to an individual SharePoint site. You can access it easy peasy directly from the site settings under “Change the look” or “Site branding” and it allows you to choose from some preset themes, or let you create a custom theme using colour pickers. Changing things here will affect your site’s header, navigation and background options, along with some accents options in your sections.
Ideal for a site owner who wants to do some personalization without affecting other sites.
Note that, if you use the hub-spoke structure, you can’t change the look or branding of the spoke-site. Alterations in the hub, will be implemented to the spokes as well.
However…there is more, so much more! For if you really want to tie things together, or are brave enough to venture into the world of custom Fonts, you might notice that from the site branding, the tab “Font packages” is greyed out.
It is super logical to think “Well if my organization hasn’t added any fonts yet, all I have to do is just click that +New font package button right?” Right? That mysterious description below is deceptive, don’t be fooled! You can smash that + button all you want, no new font packages will be added. Unfortunalety, those packages are in another castle.
Let’s shift our gaze from the Site branding, to the Brand Center.
Admins gather around and move to the M365 admin center! Hit that Settings button with all your might and move to the Org settings.
This trick only works for GLOBAL ADMINS
In the list of “Services” you might notice the little painters palette with “Brand center” next to it. Smash it with a mouse click! This is where you want to be.
You’ll probably notice two nice little fields. Maybe they’re default, maybe they’re prefilled. A factor that plays a role here is whether or not you’ve configured your organizational asset library prior to entering the Brand center or not. If you’ve never PowerShelled your way towards the org. asset. lib the default name will be something along the lines of yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/brandguide (no I do not know why they prenamed it brand guide instead of brand center). If you did bring a organizational asset library alive through PowerShell, congratulations it probably pops up as the prefilled site in your Brand center.
The two boxes aren’t much different, the first one is for end-user to reach and use, the other for admins to weave their magic.
If you haven’t already, now is the time to call in some of those Marketing or Communication people cause unfortunately we admins most of the time aren’t allowed to use our own preferred colours on the company SharePoint sites which, in some cases, might be a good thing. Yes, you know who you are hahaha….
So, after configuring this little part, let’s copy-paste that second Brand center link and BAM, welcome to the brightly coloured Brand center. You’ll notice the chosen site’s URL in the top, don’t worry about any other site just yet.
More importantly, did you notice that there is a nice, not-greyed-out “Add fonts-box” over here? Sweet! Let’s hit it! And ain’t that sweet! It looks just like a document library. You don’t need me to tell you what to do, just upload your font packages in here. Wonderfull!
Now adding colours is just about the same as from the “Site branding” part. You have your colour picker, you can enter some Hex or RGB, give it a title and toggle off or on whether you want your theme to appear.
Up until now, I’ve really just managed my exemplary site with just one colour (#305A4C named Pine) but yeah, I’m just gonna add that one again, but in the Brand Center (Pine2) another, brighter one I’ve dubbed FreshLeaf. I can however, recommend you use names that kinda stick to your organization’s brand book instead of these etherial smelly candle names. But I don’t take myself too seriously so and maybe need some away time from my screen, so I’m gonna stick with these two.
Now here comes the kicker
We did all this. Can you guess what happens once you scroll a bit down in your Brand center and go to the header “Apply your brand” and then click “SharePoint”? Just smash that button and let’s see for yourself.
Spoilers: Themes allows you to pick from the preset colours we’ve just created and even lets you create a new one. Once you’ve picked a starting colour, the combination and example screens pops up and you can go crazy with you new theme customizations. Pay attention to any Low contrast warnings, Next enter a name, save.
Same goes for Font, which brings you to your font library to pick one. Just like you did with the colours, it allows you to choose fonts for headers, buttons, normal text etc. It also allows you to choose the type settings for each font section, like bold, medium, italic, light etc.
Now…not much has changed or so it seems…For you did some exemplary work unlocking all those colours and fonts to use across your SharePoint sites.
And last but not least, let’s remember that it is now easy to copy Themes and Fonts from other sites from “Site branding” with just a few hits with the mouse button. Note that some fonts don’t work too well with certain font types, but eh, play around, have some fun and go nuts. Whatever you do, make sure to always let at least a few users across your organization try every button, every navigation link and ask what info they might be missing or find hard to reach. And don’t forget to maybe inform and train some people about using these options. With great colours comes great responsibilities. 😀
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