The SharePoint Brand Center is rolling out and available in many tenants. This new feature allows organizations to apply custom branding to SharePoint sites and Viva Connections. At the moment, custom fonts are supported in the Brand Center, with more features coming later.
The Brand Center uses the Organization Asset Library (OAL) as the base site, which allows for images to be made available to all SharePoint sites. If you’ve already got the OAL site deployed, that’s where your Brand Center will be deployed. If you haven’t deployed the OAL yet, you’ll have your choice of which URL you’d like the Brand Center deployed to.
How to Enable the SharePoint Brand Center?
1. Open the Microsoft 365 admin center
Try to learn as much as I can before designing. This means really understanding the problem at hand through research and anything else I can do to connect to the project.
2. Go to Settings and then Org settings in the admin center.
I pull together a few design directions, create prototypes, and really get a feel for the product before going into development.
3. Select Brand center (preview)
The Brand center recognizes your existing organization assets site location and will utilize this as the location for the Brand center app.
4. Activate the Brand center app for your organization
Try to learn as much as I can before designing. This means really understanding the problem at hand through research and anything else I can do to connect to the client.
5. Copy and share the link to the Brand center site/app to your site owners to unlock the Brand center app
Try to learn as much as I can before designing. This means really understanding the problem at hand through research and anything else I can do to connect to the client.
How to Use the SharePoint Brand Center?
Once the SharePoint Brand Center is enabled, it can be used to manage your organization’s brand from one central place. This ensures that your organization’s brand is consistent and professional across SharePoint and Viva Connections.
The process for using the Brand Center involves these simple steps:
Using the SharePoint Brand Center
Navigate to the SharePoint Brand Center
Go to the URL shown in the M365 Admin Center after enabling the Brand Center
Go to the Brand Center App
Click the gear icon in the upper right of the site, and select Brand Center (preview)
Upload Fonts
Using the Brand Center App, upload your fonts using the navigation provided.
Create Font Package
Create a font package, which applies your uploaded fonts to various locations in SharePoint and Viva Connections
Apply Font Packages in SharePoint
Navigate to a SharePoint site, click the gear icon, and select Change the Look. You’ll see a new option named Font (preview)
Apply Font Packages in Viva Connections
Navigate to your SharePoint Home Site, and apply your font package as you would any other SharePoint site.
Ready to for advanced SharePoint?
Use Cases of the SharePoint Brand Center
The SharePoint Brand Center is designed to reflect the identity of your organization inside SharePoint and Viva Connections. By reusing these branding elements across sites, site admins can ensure consistency across the environment. This tool is particularly useful for:
- Specifying fonts, colors, logos, and other design elements.
- Enforcing guardrails so that all sites and pages are under the same branding guidelines.
- Reflecting your organization’s identity.
Benefits of the SharePoint Brand Center
The SharePoint Brand Center offers several benefits:
Consistency: It ensures that your organization’s brand identity is coherent and professional in all your communication channels.
Efficiency: It saves time and resources by avoiding duplication and confusion of brand assets.
Empowerment: It empowers your employees to create high-quality branded content.
Authenticity: It helps site owners reflect their organization’s identity with full authenticity and help people feel more connected to it.
What Are You Waiting For?
The SharePoint Brand Center is going to be very well received, especially by Marketing departments who want the organization’s brand to shine through in all content. We’re only seeing the beginning of this product, but I think it’s going to be a crowd favorite in no time!