You put your business card next to your brochure next to your website on a laptop, and something is off. The blues are not the same blue. One uses a font the others do not. The logo has more space around it in one place than another.
Nothing is wrong exactly. It just does not look like one business.
This is extremely common and it is almost never carelessness. It is what happens by default, because consistency is not the natural state of anything made by several people at different times.
Why do my colours not match across materials?
Usually because screen colour and print colour are different systems, and somebody converted between them by eye.
Screens make colour with light, using RGB values or hex codes. Print makes it with ink, using CMYK or a Pantone reference. The same blue has different numbers in each, and converting automatically produces something close but not right.
If your designer specified only a hex code and the printer converted it themselves, you will get a blue that is nearly yours. Put the two side by side and you will see it immediately.
The fix is to define both values once, write them down, and give the printer the number rather than a picture to match.
Why does my logo look different in different places?
Because someone had to make a decision and did not have the rule.
A logo needs several versions. Full colour, single colour, one that works on dark backgrounds, one that survives being tiny. If only one file exists, everyone will adapt it themselves, and every adaptation is a small drift.
Somebody stretches it to fill a space. Somebody recolours it to sit on a photo. Somebody screenshots it from the website because the file was hard to find. Six months later there are nine slightly different logos in circulation and no record of which is correct.
Is inconsistency actually a problem, or am I being fussy?
It is a real problem, and the cost is trust rather than beauty.
Think of someone who dresses completely differently every time you meet them. Nothing they wear is wrong. But you never form a stable picture of who they are, and you take slightly longer to feel you know them.
Brands work the same way. Recognition is built by repetition, and repetition requires the thing to actually repeat. Every variation resets a little of the progress.
There is a second effect that matters more commercially. Consistency reads as organisation. A prospect cannot audit your project management, so they infer it from the evidence in front of them. Materials that clearly belong together suggest a business that has its affairs in order. That inference is unfair and completely real.
How did it get this way?
Four causes, and most businesses have all four.
Different people made different things, at different times, each doing their reasonable best without a shared reference.
The original files were lost. Very common. The logo exists as a PNG someone exported once, and every use since has been a copy of a copy.
Platforms imposed their own rules. Instagram crops differently from your website. A supplier’s system only accepted certain formats. Small compromises accumulate.
Nothing was ever written down, so there was nothing to check against even when someone wanted to get it right.
None of these are anyone’s fault. They are simply what happens without a document, which is exactly what a brand guide is for.
How do I fix it without redoing everything?
An audit first, then a document, then replace things as they naturally come up for renewal.
Gather every piece of material you use in one place. Website, social profiles, brochures, business cards, invoices, email signatures, vehicle graphics if you have them. Seeing them together is usually enough to identify the pattern in ten minutes.
Then settle the decisions once. Which blue, in both colour systems. Which fonts, for which jobs. Which logo file for which situation.
Then be pragmatic. Do not reprint everything. Fix the things people see most, which is almost always the website and the social profiles, and let printed material update as it runs out. Within a year it will all have caught up naturally.
What should I sort out first?
Three things, in this order.
Find or recreate the original logo files. Vector, editable, in every version you need. Without these nothing else can be fixed properly, and if they are genuinely lost, redrawing the mark is the first job.
Write down the exact colour values, screen and print. One line each. This single step removes most future mismatches.
Decide the fonts and where each is used. Including what to use when the real font is unavailable, because that situation will arise and someone will improvise otherwise.
Everything else can wait. Those three prevent the drift from continuing while you decide what to do about the rest.
We audit this regularly and it usually takes an afternoon. Send us what you have and we will tell you where the inconsistencies are coming from.
