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Brand design elements like fonts and logos send a message to readers about what to expect from your publication. Plus, it’s fun to express yourself by customizing your Substack’s color palette and uploading design touches like logos. This post walks you through the basics of managing the visual identity for your Substack.

To change the font and background color of your Substack, go to your Settings page, scroll to Site Design, and click Customize.

You can use the drop-down menus to select a color, or type in the hex codes. Your Accent color is used for buttons; select a color that best represents your brand.

You can make your welcome page background a different color than the rest of your publication by unticking the “Use same color for welcome page” box, and selecting two different colors for “Web background” and “Welcome page background”.

In selecting colors, you can either use the drop-down menu to pick a color:

Or, you can type in a hex code, which is a six-digit code used in the standard internet color identification system. Hex codes let you select a precise, specific color. If you don’t know the hex code for a color, you can easily find it by Googling:

To finalize your color selections, click Set Theme to save changes:

You can add design elements on your Settings page, which you get to by clicking Dashboard, then Settings. You have three design elements you can upload: square logo, cover photo, and wordmark. (The option to upload a wordmark only shows up after you upload a logo and cover page photo, so upload those first.)

All these items are optional, and you can easily publish a Substack without uploading any of them, but they do help make your publication look distinctive and branded.

Your square logo appears at the top-left-hand corner of your Substack publication pages. For dimensions, it should be at least 256 x 256 pixels.

Your square logo can be a custom design you made or had somebody make for you. Another option is a stock icon or stock photo.

Your cover photo appears on your welcome page. That’s the page publication visitors see the very first time they view your publication on the web. It’s located at [whatever your Substack subdomain is].substack.com/welcome.

Your cover page image can be a custom design you made or had somebody make for you; a picture you took; or, a photograph of yourself. Another option is a stock photograph from a website like Unsplash or Pixabay. For Houseplant Weekly’s cover page image, I used a stock photo of a plant which I downloaded from Unsplash and uploaded to my Substack via my Settings page.

Your wordmark appears in the centre of your navigation bar on the main publication page of your Substack. For dimensions, it should be at least 1024 x 256 pixels.

TIP: Wordmark only appears as an option on your Settings page after you’ve uploaded a logo and cover page image.

Here’s what my publication page looks like now that I’ve uploaded my wordmark. Notice that the text for the name of the publication at the top center of the page, is replaced with the wordmark I uploaded:

If creating a wordmark sounds way too complicated right now, don’t worry — it’s optional. If you don’t upload one, the name of your publication will still appear at the top of your publication page, in the default font.

Hope this information helped you get started with adding visual distinction to your Substack! For more detailed information on refining your Substack’s visual identity, including advice from professional designers, check out this resource from Substack Grow: Building a home for your publication

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