Why Do My Logo, Website and Instagram Look Like Three Different Companies?

Your logo, website and Instagram look like three companies because three suppliers made them without ever seeing each other’s work. Each piece is fine on its own. The logo was the one decision they shared, and the logo is the smallest thing a stranger looks at. That, in short, is how brand consistency goes missing.

It tends to happen quietly. A freelancer drew the mark two years ago. A web company built the site last year. Whoever handles the posts set up the feed. Three competent jobs, three separate briefs, and a brand nobody recognises twice.

The logo is not where people look

Open your website on a laptop and notice how little room the logo takes. It sits in a corner of the header, usually the smallest element on the screen. Everything else a visitor reads as “your brand” comes from typeface, colour, white space, the treatment of photographs and the rhythm of the layout.

None of those decisions appeared in anyone’s brief, so each supplier made them carefully and in isolation. All three chose a typeface that sits well with your logo. They simply chose three different ones, each perfectly defensible.

Diagnosing inconsistent branding: find where decisions split

Lay the three surfaces side by side at the same size and note what each one decided. Take a screenshot of the home page, a screenshot of your Instagram profile showing nine posts, and a photo of something printed: a box, a business card or a label.

For each, write down the exact colour values, the heading typeface, the body typeface, the corner radius on buttons and cards, the photo treatment, the spacing and the tone of the copy. In the audits we run, the usual finding is three different hex values for what the founder calls “our colour”, three typefaces nobody chose on purpose, and three photographic styles: clean studio white on the packaging, warm lifestyle shots on Instagram and stock imagery on the website.

That list is the diagnosis. Each line where the three disagree is a rule that was never written down, and together they tell you what the repair must contain before anyone opens a design file.

A quicker test for brand consistency

Cover the logo on all three and ask someone who does not know the business whether they belong to the same company. If the answer is no, the problem is not the quality of any single piece; it is the absence of shared rules. What a brand system is, and why the covered-logo test is the one that counts, is set out in what a product brand system is.

Why remaking the weakest piece makes things worse

Redoing the worst of the three produces a fourth version rather than a fix. The new supplier receives the same thin brief as the last three, faces the same open decisions and settles them differently again. You have now paid four times for the decision stage and sit further from recognition than before.

Founders often reach this point having spent a fair sum with nothing that builds on itself. The argument about colour reopens with every new asset, and nobody can answer the printer’s question about which blue without calling a meeting.

Brand guidelines first: the repair order that works

Write the brand guidelines first. Fix the palette in every colour system you actually publish in, screen, web, litho and digital print, because a colour that looks right on a monitor and is left unspecified for print will come back wrong. Set the typefaces and their hierarchy: how large a heading is against a paragraph and how much space sits between them. Define the clear space around the logo and the photo treatment. Add a short list of what is not allowed, the half most guidelines leave out and the half suppliers need most.

Next comes the brand itself, since the rules grow out of it rather than being bolted on afterwards.

Then the website, because it is the only surface you own outright and the only one that search engines and AI assistants read. Everything else sits on a platform that may change its layout next quarter.

Instagram comes last, because a feed can be brought into line within days once the rules exist. Instagram now lets you reorder the grid without deleting anything, so an existing feed can be restructured rather than wiped, which is the point of a grid retrofit.

Check consistent branding on the next thing you make

Run the covered-logo test again on the first new piece the rules produce, not on the old ones. If a stranger groups it with the others, the guidelines work. If not, the missing rule shows up exactly where the test failed, and you add one line rather than starting over.

What buying it three times costs

Buy the pieces separately and you pay for the decision stage three times. The conversation about tone, the palette, the typeface, the debate about how the brand should feel: every supplier runs it from scratch, because nobody hands anything on.

Buy them as one system and the decisions are made once and applied to all three. For scale, our logo and brand essentials start from £1,950, an Instagram grid from £450, and a full brand system costs £6,500 to £18,000 depending on how many products and channels it covers, all before VAT. The individual pieces look cheaper on their own, which is precisely how founders end up with three of them.

When you do not need all of it

Keep the website if it was built cleanly and its colours and typefaces live in one place in the code, where they can change without touching every page. Replace it if it is a bought theme with styling scattered through templates, because each page will quietly override the new rules and the site will drift back within a month.

That check takes about an hour and belongs before the quote. We do it first and tell you which of the two you have, including when the honest answer means a smaller job for us.

How we approach it

We design the brand, the website and the Instagram grid as one system with one set of rules, because those are the three places a buyer judges you before ever getting in touch. Alkeme is a studio: you deal directly with the founder and one senior designer, with no juniors and no handovers, and the scope and price are fixed before anything starts, so the decisions are made once and stay written down.

The commercial case for keeping one visual voice over years, as opposed to the mechanics of tidying up, is in why being all over the place is killing your brand. The service itself is the brand system.

FAQ

What does it cost a UK brand to make them match? A full brand system runs £6,500 to £18,000 with us; if only the rules are missing, a smaller scope can align what you already have.

Why do they look different if they all use the same logo? The logo is the smallest part of what people actually look at. Typeface, colour values, white space and photographic style cover the rest of the screen or the pack, and each of your three suppliers settled those on their own. Three sensible choices made three separate times do not add up to one brand.

Should I remake all three, or just the worst one? Write the rules first, then repair things in the order customers judge you. If most enquiries arrive through Instagram, start there. Remade without rules, the weakest piece just becomes a fourth version, and you pay for the same decisions again.

What document actually makes all three match? A set of brand guidelines that fixes the palette in every colour system you print and publish in, the typefaces and their hierarchy, the clear space around the logo, the photo treatment and a list of what is not allowed. Without it, each new supplier starts the same decisions from scratch and reaches different answers.

In what order should I fix brand, website and Instagram? The brand first, since the rules come from it. The website second, as it is the only surface you own outright and the only one that turns up in search. Instagram last, because once the rules exist a feed can be brought into line within days, and the grid can be reordered without deleting existing posts.

Can I keep the website I have and change only the rest? Yes, if it was built cleanly and its colours and typefaces are set in one place in the code. No, if it is a bought theme with styling scattered across templates, because every page will then resist the new rules. Checking takes about an hour and should happen before the quote, not after.