makro
Year
2026
Service
Digital Brand Guidelines
Client
makro
Question
How can a B2B brand that communicates frequently through social media organise its visual language while maintaining consistency across different types of content and making information easier for its customers to navigate?
Goal
Develop a set of visual guidelines for social media that builds upon the brand's existing identity, creating a clear and flexible system capable of organising different content categories while making communication more intuitive for its professional audience.
Process
The project began with an analysis of the brand's existing digital communication. As a B2B retailer serving the Horeca sector, MAKRO positions itself as a partner that simplifies the day-to-day operations of professional customers. Its communication therefore needs to be clear, efficient, and immediately recognisable.
Having worked on the brand's social media, I began to notice recurring inconsistencies that extended beyond individual posts. Different teams and external partners contributed to the brand's communication without a shared set of digital guidelines, resulting in a fragmented visual identity across social platforms.
Reviewing previously published content revealed recurring patterns. Product categories lacked clear visual distinction, making it difficult for customers to immediately recognise different types of communication. Promotional posts were often adapted from printed materials rather than designed specifically for digital platforms, while product photography varied considerably in quality. Recurring components such as price tags and promotional labels had also evolved without a consistent structure. Rather than isolated issues, these patterns pointed to the absence of a cohesive digital system.
Instead of proposing isolated visual improvements, I developed a dedicated set of social media guidelines that organised the brand's existing visual language into a flexible design system.
The different content categories were restructured and unified through a consistent set of layouts, typography, colour, and recurring graphic elements, allowing each category to remain distinct while becoming immediately recognisable as part of the same visual identity.
Typography was refined to modernise the brand's digital presence. Using a lighter weight with slightly tighter letter spacing made headlines more suitable for the limited space available in social media formats. At the same time, favouring sentence case—reserving all caps for initials and key words—resulted in a more approachable and accessible tone of communication.
The colour palette was expanded to better respond to the demands of digital media. Building upon the brand's two existing corporate colours, a wider range of base colours and tonal variations was introduced, allowing for more dynamic compositions while reinforcing the energy and freshness associated with the brand.
Recurring components, such as price tags and promotional labels, were also redesigned to improve hierarchy, readability, and flexibility across different campaign formats. Templates for institutional and service communication replaced layouts that had previously been adapted from print, resulting in content designed specifically for digital platforms. Finally, the system was developed to accommodate product photography of varying quality, ensuring that layouts remained balanced and visually consistent regardless of the available imagery.
Takeaway
This project reinforced the importance of approaching visual identities as adaptable systems, where consistency and flexibility must coexist to support the fast pace of digital communication.
Working from direct experience within the brand's day-to-day communication also highlighted the value of observation as part of the design process. Rather than responding to a formal brief, many of the project's decisions emerged from recognising recurring patterns and identifying opportunities where design could improve both the quality of communication and the efficiency of its production. It reinforced my interest in creating design systems that are not only visually coherent, but also practical, adaptable, and grounded in the realities of everyday design work.
