Elevating Branding with Custom CSS Highlight Colors

As a graphic designer, my daily work revolves around crafting visual experiences that captivate and resonate with audiences. One powerful tool in my design arsenal that often goes unnoticed is adding custom highlight colors on a client’s branded website with CSS. Let’s dive into the incredible benefits of using CSS to make your next website project stand out.

1. Consistency is Key: Branding is all about consistency. CSS allows you to set a specific color palette that aligns perfectly with your brand’s identity. By using custom highlight colors, you can ensure that every button, link, and call-to-action element on your website carries the same branded hue. This uniformity reinforces your brand’s recognition and trustworthiness.
2. Tailored to Perfection: Predefined color palettes can sometimes fall short of capturing your brand’s unique personality. With CSS, you have the freedom to select and tweak the exact shade that resonates with your brand’s values. Whether it’s a vibrant, energetic red or a calming, sophisticated blue, you can fine-tune your highlight color to perfection.
3. Enhanced User Experience: Custom highlight colors can enhance the user experience by providing visual cues. The color change signals interactivity when users interact with clickable elements or hover over buttons. This subtle feedback can improve navigation, making your website more user-friendly.
4. Memorable Impressions: First impressions matter. A well-chosen custom highlight color can make your website instantly memorable. When a user leaves your site and recalls that distinctive shade, it reinforces your brand’s presence in their mind.
5. Differentiation from Competitors: In today’s crowded digital landscape, setting your brand apart from competitors is crucial. CSS gives you the ability to create a unique and distinguishable highlight color that ensures your website doesn’t get lost in the sea of sameness.
6. Adaptability: As your brand evolves, so too can your website’s highlight color. With a simple adjustment to your CSS, you can easily update your site’s look to reflect new branding guidelines, product launches, or seasonal promotions.
7. Efficiency and Load Times: Custom CSS allows you to optimize your code for performance. By minimizing the use of images or unnecessary stylesheets, you can reduce load times and improve website speed, contributing to a better overall user experience.
8. Accessibility: Creating custom highlight colors also enables you to consider accessibility standards. You can select colors that meet contrast guidelines, ensuring that your website is inclusive and usable for all visitors, regardless of their visual abilities.

There are 2 ways you can use CSS to make a custom highlight (possibly even more, but I’m going to show you the 2 ways I use them.)

The first is literally changing the feature where someone selects and ‘highlights’ copy on a page. The code below will help you do just that! This example is actually the color code on my own website, go ahead and highlight something and you’ll see it in action! 

::selection {
background-color: #B4ED3C;
color: #0A001D;
}

To use this on your own website just copy and paste into your CSS stylesheet and then change the ‘background-color’ and ‘color’ to your liking! Changing the background-color does just that—it changes the background color, and changing ‘color’ actually changes the font color. This means you can actually have even more customizable options.

Like this!

The next way to utilize a CSS custom highlight is when you want to call out copy and have it already highlighted when the page loads. 

This is an Example. 

.highlight-lime {
  background-color: #B4ED3C;
}

And then to be able to call out the specific text you will use the inline code:

<span class="highlight-lime">Example</span>

I hope the above helps and if you have any questions or are a new web designer feel free to ask!

To sum it all up custom CSS Highlights allow you to tailor the online experience to match a brand’s personality and create a lasting impact on their audience. This one little trick opens up possibilities for elevating a brand’s online presence. So, why settle for a generic look when you can create a website that truly embodies your brand’s essence? Dive into CSS customization and watch your website shine like never before. 🖥️🧑🏽‍💻🌟