Milestone 02 · Weeks 2–3 · Delivered Aug 25, 2026

Design System &
Brand Direction

The web design system — dark theme, gold accents, typography, components — with the jaguar and H-mark direction concepts and the site wireframes. All three deliverables are handed over. This page records where each one landed and what HERA decided, and it stays live as the reference the build is measured against.

Deliverable 01: Design systemDelivered · palette at seven · typography settled
Deliverable 02: Mark directionDirection 01 · files delivered Sep 11–14
Deliverable 03: WireframesDelivered · reviewed Aug 28 · with counsel
Status: DeliveredAug 25 · awaiting sign-off in the portal

Deliverable 01Web design system

Delivered

Typography, color and components. The palette is curated rather than generated: seven colors, chosen for a role each, with no derived steps. Every state in the system is a transparency or a brightness of one of them. The type pairing is a single serif for structure and a single sans for everything read at length.

The palette

It is seven now, not six. Stone taupe joined on Sep 10 and it is not a transparency of anything else, so the “no seventh value” rule this page opened with no longer holds. It earns its place: on the olive plane the only available border was the 10% ivory hairline, which left cards nested in green without a delimiter. Measured, moss reaches 1.74:1 on olive and taupe 3.00:1; on black, 2.51:1 against 4.32:1. Taupe closes the gap this page recorded as unresolved. It is structure and surface — never small body text, which is why the home and the footer sit on it while long copy does not.

Black tie black

Deep olive

Sage moss

Stone taupe

Antique gold

Soft ivory

Warm ivory

The pairing

Frank Ruhl Libre · headings

Investing in what endures.

Carries every heading down to H4, set at weight 500. Chosen by HERA on Sep 14 from three alternates — Lora and Domine were the others. It does not carry the wordmark: Spectral keeps that, so the mark did not move with this decision.

Open Sans · text

HERA builds institutions. The work is measured in platforms, sectors, regions and years — counted plainly, and never dressed up.

Carries the lede, body, captions, labels and every piece of interface text. Weights resolve at 400, 500 and 600 only.

Typography is frozen. The serif was the open half and it closed on Sep 14. Open Sans stands: it was questioned internally — the brief asks for precise and not corporate, and a sans with more character would answer that better — but it was never in question with HERA, and reopening it now would reopen every screen drawn against it. Recorded rather than dropped, in case it comes back after launch.

The components

ButtonsThree levels, one gold fill, states carried by brightness rather than by extra colors.

NavigationSticky header, active state, footer. No mobile menu — the page is one guided scroll.

CardsPortfolio, journal and quote, on the deep olive plane.

Team bioPortrait, the shared Institution Builder title, belief statement, credentials.

FormsInputs, focus, required consent, and errors stated in words — there is no red in the palette.

Section headerEyebrow, title, lede, and the fact row that counts work rather than capital.

Sitting under these: the 4px spacing grid, the three radii, the alternating-plane section rhythm with its 21:9 image bands, and the graphic elements set.

One gap to close before the freeze. On the olive plane the only available border is a 10% ivory hairline — the moss structural color is specified against black and collapses when it sits on olive. Cards nested inside olive sections therefore have no adequate delimiter yet. It is a contained fix, but it belongs inside this milestone rather than after it.

Deliverable 02The institutional mark

Delivered

Direction 01 was chosen on Aug 21 and the files landed on Sep 11 and 14. What follows is not a comparison any more — it is the identity as it ships: three forms, each in the three approved colourways, drawn from the single vector the site itself uses.

Lockup

The primary form. Mark and wordmark locked in fixed relation — never re-spaced.

Gold on black

Ivory on olive

Black on ivory

Jaguar mark

Direction 01 refined, with the tail detail removed. Stands alone where the name is already present.

Gold on black

Ivory on olive

Black on ivory

Wordmark

The name without the mark, for lockups that would otherwise crowd.

Gold on black

Ivory on olive

Black on ivory

Three pairings, and no others. Gold on black, ivory on olive, black on ivory. The mark is never set in a colour outside these, never re-spaced inside the lockup, and never given a fourth ground on a whim. One gap worth naming: the site's footer and two of its panels run on stone taupe, and taupe is not among the three. Measured, ivory on taupe reaches 3.37:1 and black on taupe 4.32:1 — usable for a mark, but it needs approving rather than assuming.

What the kit still owes. The reduced artboard and the favicon crop, the pattern and mosaic tiles, and the guideline that says at which size the jaguar hands over to the simplified H. The gold in the files shipped on Sep 11 was the superseded #B88B2D; the corrected export of Sep 18 carries #B08A45 and is what is drawn above and what the build serves.

Deliverable 03Wireframes — home and subpages

Delivered — reviewed Aug 28

Low-fidelity layout for every agreed page, following the reverse-pyramid hierarchy set in milestone 01. The three answers that were holding them came back, and the set was drawn and walked through on the Aug 28 call.

The three answers that unblocked them. The top half is written for stakeholders, operators and vendors — not qualified investors, and not strategic partners. Proof at launch is carried by two stories rather than figures, P1 Pratia Oncology and Zogen, with the bios doing the rest. And the four vertical pages go ahead on a shared template, which sets the page count.

What the set contains. A home with room for an image or a video in the hero, the four verticals, a portfolio of three companies, a proof section, an operator slider, and the journal integrated at the foot of the page rather than sitting on its own. Reviewed and approved on Aug 28; the colour scheme was validated on the same call.

Now with your counsel. The approved wireframes go to HERA's legal team so the disclaimers are written against real layout rather than retrofitted into a finished build. That review runs two to three weeks, so it runs alongside the build rather than after it — the disclaimer slots are already drawn into the design and the text drops into them.

DecisionsWhat HERA decided

Both questions this page asked have been answered. They are kept here, with the answer, because the build is measured against them — and because one of the two came back only half closed.

Two decisions · Milestone 02

Answered — Mel Davies, Aug 21 & Sep 4

01 · Curated palette and type pairing — closed

Both halves are settled.

Colour: settled, after two revisions. Imperial gold and stone ivory hold. A neutral taupe joins the deep olive rather than a second green accent, and bone ivory replaces warm ivory with soft ivory carrying the headings. The home runs green and taupe; the interior pages run black and taupe. That split is now a rule, not a preference.

Type: closed on Sep 14. Reopened on Sep 4 because the ask was for something less common that balances against a wordmark which is already custom lettering. Three alternates were shown on the Sep 11 call — Lora, Frank Ruhl Libre and Domine — and HERA answered three days later: “Confirmed — our choice is this Frank Ruhl Libre option.” Lora and Domine are out. Spectral keeps the wordmark, Open Sans keeps the text, and the build already carries all three.

Unblocked — the component library, the hi-fi mockups, and the brand guidelines PDF. What is still outstanding is the published type scale: sizes, line heights and weights, which land with the guidelines.

02 · Brandmark — answered

Direction 01, refined, with a simplified H beside it.

The heritage jaguar goes forward for the legacy it carries. Direction 02 is eliminated. Two things follow from the choice, and both are in hand: the tail detail that reads as a ponytail comes out, and the mark is redrawn as vector so it can produce a reduced artboard, a single-colour knockout and a favicon.

The detailed jaguar is not asked to do everything. The simplified H-mark carries small sizes and print, which is where the detail would have closed up. One identity, two executions, drawn together rather than one retrofitted onto the other.

The files landed on Sep 11 and 14. The lockup, the isotipo and the wordmark are each delivered in gold, ivory and black, as SVG, PNG and JPG, with the three approved pairings drawn out: gold on black, ivory on olive, black on ivory. The gold-on-black lockup is already the header of the build.

Still to come — the reduced artboard and the favicon, the pattern and mosaic tiles, and the guidelines that say at what size each version takes over. One gap worth naming: the footer runs on taupe, and none of the three approved pairings covers taupe.