Design Tips & Branding Guidelines

Here’s how to ensure your team’s signatures look clean, cohesive, and on-brand.

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1. Keep It Simple and Professional

Simplicity is key to a signature that looks good across devices and email clients. Avoid overloading it with too many elements or colors. Stick to essential details:

Remember: clarity matters more than creativity in this space. A signature should enhance communication, not distract from it.

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2. Use Brand Colors and Fonts Consistently

Your brand’s colors and typography are powerful tools for recognition. Extend these into your email signatures, but do so thoughtfully. Use your primary brand color sparingly, perhaps for the employee’s name, company name, or divider lines. Supporting text should stay neutral, often in black or dark neutral colors, to maintain readability.

When it comes to fonts, choose safe options such as Arial, Verdana, or Helvetica that resemble your brand’s standard typefaces. Keeping colors and fonts consistent ensures your emails always look “on brand,” even when viewed on different devices or outside your organization.

Consistency ensures your emails always look “on brand,” even when viewed outside your company.

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3. Optimize Logo Size and Placement

A logo gives instant visual identity, but placement and sizing can make or break the look. Keep your logo under 200 pixels wide and under 100 KB in file size so it displays quickly and cleanly. Positioning the logo at the top or to the left of the text typically works best for readability, especially on mobile.

Always use a PNG file with a transparent background to avoid alignment issues and maintain sharpness across all screen types. This balance ensures your logo looks sharp and professional across all screen types.

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4. Add Social Icons with Subtlety

Social media icons can boost engagement, but use them strategically.

A neat row of small, matching icons can elevate your signature without cluttering it.

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5. Be Mobile-Friendly

A majority of emails are read on mobile devices, so your signature must scale smoothly. Avoid large images or wide horizontal layouts that may break on smaller screens. A single-column format works best, keeping everything aligned vertically for easier viewing.

Text should remain legible at smaller sizes, around 12 to 14 pixels for body text is ideal. Test your signature across different devices to make sure it stays readable and balanced everywhere.

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6. Maintain Compliance and Accessibility

In many industries, legal disclaimers or confidentiality statements are required. Make sure these are:

• Written clearly and concisely
• Placed below the main signature content
• Styled in a smaller, muted font to avoid distraction

Also, use alt text for images to make your signature accessible for all recipients.

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7. Create a Signature Template

Once you’ve finalized your design, document it as part of your brand guidelines. Include specific details such as font choices, color codes, logo dimensions, and preferred placements. Provide an example signature layout for different departments to ensure flexibility while maintaining a unified appearance.

This reference helps new team members and external partners create signatures that align perfectly with your brand identity.

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Bringing It All Together

A thoughtfully designed email signature strengthens your brand every time your team communicates. When applied consistently, it reinforces professionalism, trust, and recognition without anyone needing to think twice about it.If your organization uses Google Workspace, Signature Manager makes it easy to apply these designs and branding standards company-wide ensuring every user’s signature looks polished, compliant, and perfectly on-brand.