Branding SharePoint

By Ryan Keller

February 7, 2012 — (Page 1 of 3)
Your organization has successfully deployed SharePoint, and you and your colleagues have learned all about its document-management, collaboration and content-management features. But somehow you just can't shake the feeling that the look of such a powerful product leaves a little to be desired. Apparently management feels the same way, because now it's time to apply a little bit of style to SharePoint to spice it up a little, and maybe give it a look that's a little more in line with your organization's branding. So how do you go about this?

There are a few options for branding a SharePoint site, ranging from the simple to the complex. In the simplest terms, you can apply a company logo to the SharePoint portal and call it a day. For some organizations, this may be enough to keep management happy, but what are the other options available?

There is the theme engine, which essentially applies a color skin to the out-of-the-box SharePoint site. If none of the themes that ship with SharePoint work for you (and there's a good chance they won't), you can always create a custom theme using Office 2007 or 2010 and upload it, but even that might not get you the end results you want.

Finally, you can dive in and do some custom branding yourself. This in itself is a bigger topic than a single article can cover, but the theory behind this point is the main focus of this article.

Generally speaking, when you start branding SharePoint, you want to have an end goal in mind; that is, you should have an idea of what your branded site will look like. The best way to start thinking about this is to look at your organization's branding and think about how it can be applied to SharePoint. Think about the colors you generally see on company letterhead, the company's public website, the company logo, and other branded applications you may use on a day-to-day basis.

Once you have a good idea about the color scheme, spend a little time surfing the Web for some additional inspiration, and if your boss catches you doing this, at least you can honestly say you're working! Maybe there are a few sites that have a certain look that you want to replicate. If this is your first time branding SharePoint, it's best to not get too crazy with your design, but whatever strikes your fancy can generally be replicated one way or another.

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Share this link: http://www.sptechweb.com/link/36343

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Comments

03/01/2012 12:51:30 AM EST

Love it! This is a wfednroul and useful concept, with the Monopoly metaphor being particularly useful. The challenge, however, from clients will be as follows: Yeah right. We already run flat out to do the one big bang gorilla' footprint marketing campaign. We simply do not have the resources and time in the day to spread ourselves as thinly as your pico-branding strategy would require 'How do you answer that?

Bosnia and HerzegovinaJosephina

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Branding SharePoint

By Ryan Keller

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