Why Do My Logo, Website and Instagram Look Like Three Different Companies?

Because you bought them from three suppliers who never saw each other’s work. Each one is correct on its own. The logo was the only decision they shared, and the logo is the smallest thing a stranger looks at.

Two years ago a freelancer made the mark. Last year a web company built the site. Someone handling posts set up the feed. Three competent jobs, three separate briefs, and a brand that nobody can recognise twice.

The surface is not where you think it is

Open your website on a laptop and look at how much room the logo takes. The mark sits in the corner of the header and it is usually the smallest element on the screen. Everything else a visitor reads as “your brand” is typeface, colour, the amount of empty space, the treatment of the photographs and the rhythm of the layout.

Those decisions were never in anybody’s brief, so each supplier made them well and made them alone. All three picked a typeface that works with your logo. They picked three different typefaces, each of them defensible.

The diagnosis: find the decisions that diverged

Put the three surfaces next to each other at the same size and write down what each one decided. Take a screenshot of the home page, a screenshot of your Instagram profile at nine posts, and a photo of something printed, a box, a card, a label.

Then list, for each of the three, the exact colour values, the heading typeface, the body typeface, the corner radius on buttons and cards, the photo treatment, the amount of space around things, and the tone of the words. In the audits we run, the usual result is three different hex values for what the founder calls “our colour”, three typefaces nobody chose on purpose, and three photo styles: studio white on the packaging, warm lifestyle on Instagram, stock on the website.

The list is the whole diagnosis. Every line where the three disagree is a rule that was never written, and it tells you what the repair has to contain before anybody opens a design file.

The quick version of the same test

Cover the logo on all three and ask someone who does not know you whether they belong to the same company. If the answer is no, the problem is not the quality of any one piece, it is that no shared rules exist. The longer explanation of what a system is, and why the covered-logo test is the one that matters, is in what a product brand system is.

Why remaking the weakest piece makes it worse

Remaking the worst of the three produces a fourth version, not a repair. The new supplier gets the same empty brief the previous three got, makes the same open decisions, and makes them differently again. You have now paid four times for the decision phase and you are further from recognition than when you had three.

Founders arrive at this point having spent real money and having nothing that compounds. The colour argument reopens with every new asset. Nobody can answer a printer’s question about which blue without a meeting.

The repair order that works

Write the rules first. Palette fixed in every colour system you actually publish in, screen, web, offset and digital print, because a colour that is right on a monitor and unspecified for print will come back wrong from the printer. Typefaces with their hierarchy, meaning what size a heading is against a paragraph and how much space sits between them. Minimum clear space around the logo. Photo treatment. And a short list of what is not allowed, which is the half most guidelines skip and the half suppliers need most.

Then the brand itself, because the rules come out of it rather than being bolted on afterwards.

Then the website, because it is the only surface you own completely and the only one that search engines and AI assistants read. Everything else sits on a platform that can change its layout next quarter.

Then Instagram, last, because a feed aligns in days once the rules exist. Instagram now allows the grid to be reordered without deleting anything, so an existing feed can be restructured rather than wiped, which is the whole point of a grid retrofit.

Then check it, on the next thing you make

Repeat the covered-logo test on the first new asset the rules produced, not on the old ones. If a stranger places it with the others, the rulebook works. If it does not, the missing rule shows up exactly where the test failed, and you add one line instead of starting again.

What buying it three times costs

Bought separately, you pay for the decision phase three times. The conversation about tone, the choice of palette, the choice of typeface, the argument about what the brand should feel like: every supplier runs it from zero, because nobody hands anything to the next one.

Bought as one system, the decision phase happens once and applies to all three. For scale: logo and brand essentials start from £1,950, an Instagram grid from £450, and a full brand system runs between £6,500 and £18,000 depending on how many products and how many channels sit inside it. The piece prices look cheaper in isolation, which is exactly how founders end up with three of them.

When you do not need all of it

Keep the website if it was built cleanly and the colours and typefaces live in one place in the code, where they can be changed without touching every page. Replace it if it is a bought theme with styling buried across templates, because then each page quietly overrides the new rules and the site drifts back within a month.

The check takes about an hour and belongs before the quote. We run it first and say which of the two you have, including when the honest answer means a smaller job for us.

How we think about it

We design the brand, the website and the Instagram grid as one system with one rulebook, because those are the three surfaces a buyer judges you on before speaking to you. Alkeme is a studio: you work directly with the founder and one senior designer, no juniors and no handoffs, with the scope and the price fixed before anything starts, so the decision phase happens once and stays written down.

The commercial case for holding one visual voice over years, rather than the mechanics of fixing a mess, is in why being all over the place is killing your brand. The service itself is the brand system.

FAQ

What does it cost a UK brand to make them match? A full brand system runs £6,500 to £18,000 with us; if only the rules are missing, a smaller scope can align what you already have.

Why do they look different if they all use the same logo? Because the logo is the smallest part of what anybody looks at. The typeface, the colour values, the amount of empty space and the style of the photography fill the rest of the surface, and each of your three suppliers chose those independently. Three reasonable choices, made three times, do not add up to one brand.

Should I remake all three, or just the worst one? Write the rules first, then repair in the order people judge you. If buyers find you through Instagram, start there. Remade without rules, the weakest of the three becomes a fourth version rather than a repair, and you pay for the same decisions again.

What document actually makes all three match? A rulebook that fixes the palette in every colour system you print and publish in, the typefaces with their hierarchy, the minimum clear space around the logo, the photo treatment, and the list of things that are not allowed. Without it, every new supplier makes the same decisions from scratch and makes them differently.

In what order should I fix brand, website and Instagram? Brand first, because the rules come out of it. Website second, because it is the only surface you fully own and the only one that appears in search. Instagram last, because once the rules exist a feed aligns in days, and the grid can be reordered without deleting the posts you already have.

Can I keep the website I have and change only the rest? Yes, if it was built cleanly and the colours and typefaces can be changed in one place in the code. No, if it is a bought theme with the styling buried across templates, because then every page fights the new rules. The check takes about an hour and belongs before the quote, not after it.