Is it important for my marketing materials to match my website?
Don’t match.� Coordinate.
You should find elements of each to play off of when designing one or the other.� Printed marketing materials have their own essence of navigation and design.� When you plan and design a brochure you start from the front, and lead the viewer through the information by how they open the piece and read through it.� So you are able to lay content and imagery based on a static image size.
With a website, your navigation is non-linear.� The viewer can look at any page in any order and there is not a fixed size or space.� It is important that you design for the viewing habits inherent in each media.� “Lead” the viewer with calls to action through and to the information they are looking for clearly and intuitively.
Branding is the important factor here.� The viewer that has come from your printed materials to your site should take solace in that they have arrived to the correct site.� This is fulfilled through branding each appropriately to their medium.� It could be as simple as the color pallet and font usage that is all that ties it together while stylistically being similar.�
Don’t simply reconfigure a printed design to fit on a webpage and vice versa.