You ever open a restaurant menu and immediately lose your appetite? Not because of the food, but because the design is an absolute mess of fonts, spacing, and layout chaos? (No? Just me?)
Well, that’s the exact feeling your audience gets when your visuals, voice, and vibe aren’t telling the same story.
In this solo episode, I’m putting on my designer hat (my favourite one, obviously) and dishing up the unfiltered truth about why those tiny brand inconsistencies aren’t so tiny after all. Because while a rogue typo on a dinner menu might be mildly annoying, a mismatch in your brand could be quietly costing you clients.
We’re getting into the definition of consistency, how to tell if your brand’s secretly out of sync, and why a cohesive brand world doesn’t box you in but gives your creativity room to breathe.
Every week (okay, most weeks — I'm only human), I open up a question box on Instagram Stories where you can ask me anything about branding.
Out of all those design-y, strategy, colour theory-adjacent questions that come in, you know what gets asked the most?
It's not "how do I stand out" or "what fonts should I use" or "how do I get more visible."
It's "how do I keep things consistent."
We've been sold a very narrow version of what consistency means in marketing. We think about it as this exhausting, overwhelming treadmill of posting every day, showing up on every platform, and being present 24/7.
But posting everywhere every day is gonna do sweet fuck all if you look and sound completely different every time you show up.
If you're giving beachy calm vibes on Instagram, but sounding like a marketing bro on LinkedIn, and then your website looks like 2019 you built it with equal parts ChatGPT and pre-made templates you forced yourself to fit into — there's nothing in there to remember you by.
It's just a whole bunch of confusing touch points that make people work harder to get you. And we all know people don't like working hard, especially when they're online trying to find the right person to work with!
Visibility matters. The more eyes you can get on your brand, the more people are going to know about it, but without that consistency factor, those people you were now visible to are never going to move down that know-like-trust funnel to eventually buy from you.
And isn't conversion the whole point of marketing and being visible in the first place?
When your brand is fragmented, everything is going to feel inconsistent. You feel your brain doing mental gymnastics, wondering if what you're about to share is on-brand or just slightly off.
And most of the time, we don't even realise it's happening because we're so close to our own brands. We're emotionally attached, as we should be. We've been through every version, every draft, every pivot, and so it all makes sense to us because we've been through it.
We stop seeing the disconnects. We can't tell anymore where the personality drops off. We miss the moments where we've outgrown a font or a voice or a format.
We're just doing our best, trying to hold it all together while the algorithm yells at us for not posting enough.
Maybe you're thinking: Okay Eva, that's all good, but my clients care more about the quality of what I do than how my brand looks.
I get what you're trying to say. But let's not kid ourselves — whether they realise it or not, people are visual.
It's not just about prettiness. It's the packaging of your promise. How much more exciting is it to open a really well-wrapped gift that has all the bells and whistles than something thrown in a bag, probably last minute?
It's visuals that make people feel like you're credible and consistent and trustworthy before they even get a chance to read a word of your copy.
So yes, inconsistency is costing you clients. Not because they spotted a rogue font or the wrong colour, but because they felt this micro wobble, that disconnect, that break in trust. And even if they can't name it, they can feel it.
You might also be thinking: But I don't want to be consistent. I want to be inspired and spontaneous. I don't want to box myself in.
I hear you. I'm the Uncaged Brand Designer, for crying out loud.
But I'm also going to tell you that consistent isn't a cage or some boring rulebook. In fact, I think that's exactly where so many business owners get it wrong — they look at their brand guidelines with the same amount of excitement they'd look at a school textbook or the boring instructions to a fun game when you actually just want to get stuck in and be messy and play.
To me, consistency and your brand guidelines are less "stick to your fonts, never change your colour palette, say the same five things forever, be a brand robot" and more like the big red striped tent that lets you go wild with the show that happens on the inside.
Instead of limiting your creativity, this consistency should fuel your creativity.
You can change the acts inside. You can switch jugglers for fire-breathers and bring in a surprise musical guest or a contortionist on roller skates. But if you keep changing the tent — blue one week, gold the next, suddenly it's a modernist art installation with no walls and a white cube — people won't even know it's your show. They won't come back because they don't recognise it.
It's not about sounding the same all the time. It's about sounding like you all the time.
It's not about sticking to one idea or version of you forever and ever. It's about evolving in a way that's recognisable and clear.
It's not about being predictable. It's about being coherent.
Consistency gives your audience that container, a vibe, a feeling they can trust. And it gives you, the business owner behind it all, the creative shortcut that makes showing up for your brand a whole lot easier.
One of my very first clients came to me because as they were doing some intentional scrolling time on Instagram to engage with content from their audience and industry peers, they came across this random post and thought, Oh, I don't remember posting this.
Only to realise it wasn't actually their post. It just looked exactly like their brand.
They had this realisation that if they couldn't tell the difference being the brand owner, let alone their audience — that's precisely what you want to avoid. You don't want to get confused with another service provider.
When your brand is unmistakably yours, the best thing you can do is be consistent with it instead of changing it all the time.
Because then your audience can recognise you, feel like they belong in your community, follow along your journey. They get to be excited about what's going to happen next. They can opt in to what makes sense for them. They're anticipating what your next post, your next story, your next offer is going to be. And they trust that you're going to show up with the same energy, the same vibe, the same values.
All this doesn't mean you have to do everything perfectly. But it does mean you have to stop winging it.
Start noticing where the disconnects are. Start tying the threads together so that you can build that community you've been craving, make marketing efforts feel easier and like they actually pay off, so that in the end you can have fun with your brand and business again.
If you're listening to this and thinking: "Yeah, that's me — my brand's been feeling like three menus from three different restaurants taped together with washi tape", it might be time to put that designer hat on purpose and start treating your brand like a show.
And if you'd rather, you can just let me be the ringleader and put my designer hat on instead. You know where to find me!
See you in the next show!
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This episode was co-produced with Adrienne Cruz.
Over the last 5 years as a Brand & Marketing Designer, I’ve helped freaks like us design their unconventional brands so they can step onto the main stage & own their weird. Because if you wanted to be, look or sound like everyone else, you wouldn’t be where you are today. Now it’s your turn.
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