Signs it is time to revisit brand consistency

Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. A few signals that brand consistency is due some attention.

Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• Consistency is what makes a small company look established
• Document the rules or they drift within a quarter

How to approach it

Consistency is not sameness, it is predictability. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

How to tell if yours is fine

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about brand consistency before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Consistency is not sameness, it is predictability — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.