Using Text Color & Highlighting on Substack

How to add visual emphasis, improve readability, and strengthen your publication's branding.

Substack slipped in two new features through the back door recently that make a surprisingly big difference to the look and feel of your posts: text highlighting and text color.

Now, before everyone goes full rainbow unicorn and starts decorating newsletters like an elementary school scrapbook, let’s talk strategy.

Used sparingly, these tools can help guide a reader’s eye through your content.

You can draw attention to important takeaways, highlight key quotes, emphasize action steps, or simply break up large blocks of text in a way that feels more intentional and visually appealing.

Think of it like decorating a room. A bright orange couch can look fantastic, but 19 bright orange couches crammed into the same room? Less fantastic.

In the video below, I’ll show you a few simple ways to use text highlighting and text color without turning your publication into a circus. A tiny bit of visual emphasis can go a long way when it comes to readability, branding, and helping readers focus on what matters most.

As with most design choices, the goal isn’t to use the feature because it’s there. The goal is to make your writing easier (and more enjoyable) to read.

Here’s a quick 5-minute run-through of the text color and highlighting features, with live examples of how it can benefit us…in living color!

By the way, if you've ever looked at publications like Homebody(ish) Magazine and wondered how everything seems to fit together so beautifully, that's exactly the kind of thing we'll be exploring inside my Substack Branding Bonanza next month (July).

Over four weeks, we’ll work on the pieces that make a publication feel like you — your visual identity, your voice, your vibe, and the little details that help readers recognize your work before they even see your name attached to it. Because strong branding isn’t ONLY about logos and color palettes. It’s about creating a publication that feels intentional, memorable, and unmistakably yours.

If your Substack currently feels more like a collection of posts than a cohesive publication, I’d love to have you join us.

Have you been exploring these little branding tweaks in your posts lately? If not, will you start now?

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Visit our ever-growing video vault for more targeted tutorials that walk you through the exact setup, organization, and backend tweaks I use with clients, so you can clean things up, fix what’s not working, and actually feel in control of your publication.