# A custom background for your brand: why it matters and how to get one

[Canonical HTML page](https://gradiently.design/guide/unique-background-for-brand)

Your logo covers a corner. Your background covers everything else. Here is why a custom background is the quickest route to a recognisable brand, and three honest ways to get one.

## The short version

- A brand background usually covers most of every post, story, slide and banner, so it shapes recognition more than a logo in the corner.
- Stock backgrounds and template presets are shared by countless other accounts, which makes them work against recognition.
- A custom background can be commissioned from a designer, built yourself from a gradient and grain, or claimed as a Gradiently Mark.
- A good brand background has a calm area for words, renders properly at every size and stays the same across every platform.
- Once you have one, use it on everything for months before judging it, because recognition comes from repetition.

A **custom background for brand** use is a surface made for one brand alone: a specific colour family, material, light and texture that sits behind every post, story, slide and web page. It matters because the background is the largest thing in almost every design you make. A logo might fill a twentieth of a frame. The background fills nearly all of it, which means it is doing most of the work of making you recognisable, or failing to.

## Why the background matters more than the logo

People scroll past most posts in a moment. In that time they don't read a logo; they register a colour and a feeling. If that colour and feeling are the same every time, they start to know you without trying. If you use a different stock image each week, they have nothing to hold on to.

- Post 1080×1350: 1080 × 1350
- Story 1080×1920: 1080 × 1920
- Slides 1920×1080: 1920 × 1080
- LinkedIn banner 1584×396: 1584 × 396

Four formats a small brand uses every week, drawn to scale. In each one, the background is most of what people see.

This is the same principle behind [distinctive brand assets](https://gradiently.design/guide/distinctive-brand-assets): the things people recognise you by have to be consistent and unlike anyone else's. A background is the easiest of those assets to apply everywhere, because every format has one.

## What's wrong with stock and preset backgrounds

### Stock or preset

- Used by many other accounts
- Popular colours chosen by trend
- One image cropped to every size
- Busy in the place your words need to go
- Swapped every few weeks out of boredom

### Custom

- Used by you alone
- Colours chosen for your brand
- Rendered properly at each size
- A calm area planned for headlines
- Kept long enough to be recognised

There is nothing wrong with a free gradient for a one-off. The problem is building a brand on one, because the same blend is behind countless other feeds. [Why every feed looks the same](https://gradiently.design/guide/why-every-feed-looks-the-same) explains how that happens, and [stock images vs custom graphics](https://gradiently.design/guide/stock-vs-custom-visuals) weighs the trade more broadly.

## What makes a good brand background

- **A ground colour** that sets the mood, dark or light, and stays the same on everything.
- **A small colour family** of three to five related tones, not a two-colour preset.
- **A material or texture**, such as fine grain or soft light, so it reads as a surface rather than a default. [Brand texture](https://gradiently.design/guide/brand-texture) covers the options.
- **A calm zone for words**, lower in detail and higher in contrast, wherever the headline usually sits.
- **The ability to render at any size** without the light landing somewhere odd.

- Wine ground, rose light: `radial-gradient(circle at 85% 10%, #fb7185 0%, #9f1239 35%, #1c0a12 75%)`
- Cream ground, honey light: `radial-gradient(circle at 15% 85%, #fde68a 0%, #f5e6c8 40%, #f8f3ea 80%)`
- Deep teal, mint light: `radial-gradient(ellipse at 70% 0%, #5eead4 0%, #0f766e 35%, #042f2e 80%)`

Three starting points with a ground, a family and a light source. Each leaves a quiet area opposite the light for words.

## Three ways to get a custom background

| Route | Good for | Watch out for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Commission a designer | A full identity where the background is one part of a larger system | You receive files at fixed sizes; new formats mean going back to them |
| Build it yourself | Tight budgets and people comfortable with design tools | Easy to land on the same blends everyone else uses |
| Claim a Gradiently Mark | A finished, original surface that works at every size straight away | Keeping a Mark is yearly after the first year, unless you have Pro |

Each route can work. The right one depends on budget, time and how many formats you publish in.

### Building one yourself

1. **Pick the ground** Decide dark or light first. It sets the mood more than any accent colour.
2. **Choose a family** Three to five neighbouring colours from [how to choose brand colors](https://gradiently.design/guide/how-to-choose-brand-colors), plus one accent used sparingly.
3. **Light it from one place** Put the brightest colour in a corner, away from where your headline will go.
4. **Add fine grain** A low opacity noise layer makes it feel like a surface and prevents banding.
5. **Make it at each size** Recreate it for square, portrait, story and wide formats instead of cropping one file.

### Claiming a Mark

A Gradiently Mark is a living background: a recipe of colours, up to three stacked materials, light, grain, motion and a type voice. Marks are crafted by Gradiently and checked against every other, so anything too close is refused and no two look alike. You can design with any unclaimed Mark for free. Claiming one makes you its only owner, with your name on its public record and a numbered certificate, and only you can export with it. [What is a Mark](https://gradiently.design/guide/what-is-a-mark) explains the details.

A restaurant post announcing a spring tasting menu, with the headline sitting on a busy area of the background

Without making room, a busy part of the background can run straight through the words.

The same restaurant post with a calmer, higher contrast area of the background behind the headline

A Mark moves its calmest region behind the text, so every line reads.

## Using your background consistently

Once you have a background, the hard part is not changing it. Use it on every post, story, slide deck, email header and website hero for at least a few months. Let the words, photos and layouts change while the surface stays put. That repetition is what turns a nice background into a brand asset. [Brand consistency](https://gradiently.design/guide/brand-consistency) has a checklist for keeping everything aligned.

> **Write it down** Add your background to your brand kit with a single rule, such as "every design sits on the brand background, light from the top right". One sentence stops a lot of drift.

## FAQ

### Why should a brand have its own background?

The background covers most of every design, so a consistent, unique one makes your posts recognisable before anyone reads them.

### Can I use a free gradient as my brand background?

You can, but popular free gradients are used by many other accounts, so they do little for recognition. Adding your own colours, light and grain helps.

### What makes a background work behind text?

A calm, high contrast area where the words sit, with the brightest and busiest colour kept away from the headline.

### Is a Gradiently Mark a trademark or an NFT?

Neither. Ownership is a record in Gradiently's registry with a numbered certificate anyone can check, with no blockchain involved.