5 Ways to Make a Squarespace Template Experience Custom

Updated Feburary 2020

Squarespace provides beautiful, clean templates that tin save you time and make information technology easy to build your own site. Simply with a express number of templates to choose from, won't your site look like all the other Squarespace sites? How can your site stand out above the others?

These are great questions, and in this post we'll testify yous some ways to brand your site feel custom fifty-fifty though you lot're using a Squarespace template.

Here are 5 techniques to make your Squarespace template await and feel custom.

A laptop, business cards, and a mobile phone showing the logo and colorful, mobile-friendly website that Knapsack Creative designed for Fringe. Fringe enables businesses to offer modern benefits to their employees.

i. Implement your brand

At that place's nothing worse than a fun, hip creative bureau with a site that feels corporate and traditional. Or a high-finish law firm with a site that feels beautiful and friendly. Make sure that your brand matches you lot, and so apply it to your template.

Use Squarespace's Site Styles to customize fonts, colors, headings, buttons, image blocks, forms (really everything) all in the cohesive style of your make. Having a conspicuously defined make that is translated into colors, fonts, language and imagery throughout your site immediately makes information technology your own.

The example above, Fringe, is an upbeat company that is providing other companies a fun alternative to employee benefits, so the site needed to feel friendly and exciting. Nosotros used bright colors, friendly curves, and happy imagery to custom-tailor their site.

The Good Story's website has really unique transitions between sections from running watercolors to cobble stone streets that sets the site apart from traditional Squarespace templates.

2. Create Unique Imprint Images

If yous've ever looked through our portfolio you lot'll find that nosotros love designing custom, artistic banners for our clients that disrupt the out-of-the-box templates.

If you take basic Photoshop skills, this is a groovy way to accept your site to the adjacent level.

Just accept your imprint image into Photoshop and create a unique edge forth the top or bottom using shapes, brushes or patterns.

Once you've uploaded the epitome to Squarespace, make sure to set the image'southward focal point to the customized edge you created then information technology doesn't go cropped off on diverse screen sizes.

You can likewise customize images by calculation textures and overlays in Photoshop. The possibilities are pretty much countless!

Upstate Laundromat's website, by Knapsack Creative, on a laptop and mobile phone with icons in branded colors to create a more cohesive feel.

3. Add Icons

This adjacent technique not only makes your site feel more custom, but it's a great way to visually organize your content (which increases the chances of your text being read).

You tin change stock icon packs in Illustrator to make them match the brand colors and the overall manner of your site. Adobe Stock is a nifty resource for icons.

Once yous've created them, try adding them every bit image blocks along with respective text to create a custom feel.

Card Image Block

Carte du jour Epitome Block

Stack Image Block

Stack Image Block

4. Become Creative with Prototype Blocks

Squarespace offers 5 unlike designs for how to layout images with text. The layouts include Affiche, Menu, Overlap, Collage and Stack. There's lots of ways to employ these, so get creative.

On our own site at Knapsack, nosotros use Squarespace'due south image blocks through out the site. In the first example, we are using the Carte du jour prototype block and in the second example, we are using the Stack paradigm block. With Squarespace'southward paradigm blocks you tin can achieve unique and interesting layouts (and bonus, they'll look great on mobile).

A Perfect Plate's website has a subtle pattern in the banner and complimentary design elements to make the site feel more custom. We also used custom shapes for the photos.

5. Comprise Patterns & Shapes

Other design elements we often comprise is textures and patterns. Not just do they have your brand to the next level, it makes a Squarespace template feel unique and original.

Use a pattern as a banner paradigm, like the example above, so incorporate gratuitous design elements in your images to tie in the pattern. Or give your images a custom feel past cutting them out into an interesting shape. Nosotros exercise this in Photoshop using a Clipping Mask.

intergratedperformance-mockup-floating.jpg

So there you accept it! We hope these techniques aid take your Squarespace site to the next (very custom-feeling) level. Take a stab at these tricks and let usa know how information technology goes!

Rent Knapsack to build a website that makes you proud

If you need help making a Squarespace template look crawly, nosotros're here to help! We've built over 400 sites using Squarespace templates. Schedule a meeting with i of our designers if y'all'd like to discuss your project.