Locked · June 17, 2026
Approved. The palette is now locked.
Dr. DNicole Fields confirmed by email: “yes, lock it.” The brand bible, the brand rules file, and the Culture Talkz hub are now all set to your live website palette. No more conflict.
#ffffff white bg |
#121b3b footer navy |
#e48a29 orange |
#f6ad55 light orange |
#d8ccb6 tan |
#868686 gray |
Fonts locked: Montserrat headings, Lato body.
Your own words
What you actually said about color
On the blue (Jun 17): “The blue still seems kind of off.” And it is not the same blue as your footer.
On backgrounds (May 5 Visual Direction Brief): “Bright, high-key white backgrounds.” Hard no: “Beige, cream, tan, or tinted backdrops.”
On backgrounds (May 2 to 3): “White background is better. The beige dates it.”
April 10 brand standards: “Use navy as an accent, not the default. Begin incorporating other brand colors as primary backgrounds.”
Palette 1
Your brand bible (the document)
Codified in brand_rules.json. Cream is a primary, gold is forbidden, the orange is a muted rust.
Palette 2
Your live website (iexdg.com)
Pulled straight from the site CSS. White backgrounds, a deeper navy, a warm orange, and a gold accent.
The messy one
Your orange, recorded 5 different ways
Five distinct oranges live across your materials, and the first four are not the orange on your site. The last one is.
Head to head
The two you flagged
→
You called cream a hard no. The hub is now white.
#1B2A4Abible navy (looked off)
Sourced
Where the rules came from
The strict rules were a fix for one dashboard you rejected, then frozen into the rulebook. They were never your brand direction.
Apr 10
Your brand standards, your words: softer, navy as an accent not the default, bring in other colors as primary backgrounds.
Apr 24
A dashboard draft used bright orange #E8611A, gold, and green. You gave it a thumbs down. The rebuild swapped to cream, rust, and navy, and marked orange, gold, and green as forbidden.
Apr 28
Those fix choices, cream primary, rust, no orange or gold, were written into the brand rules file as the official palette.
May 2 to 5
You said cream and beige looked dated and asked for bright white backgrounds.
Live site
navy #121b3b, orange #e48a29, gold accent, white backgrounds. Matches none of the April rules.
The recommendation
One palette to lock (your live site)
Make the brand bible match the website, since that is what your clients already see. Fonts: Montserrat for headings, Lato for body.
Action
What to change in the brand bible
- Background: change the primary from cream #EBECE3 to bright white #ffffff, per your own visual brief. Keep tan #d8ccb6 only as a rare warm accent.
- Navy: change #1B2A4A to #121b3b, your footer blue. One official navy.
- Orange: lock #e48a29 as the single official orange. Retire #f4911e, #E8611A, #B85C2A, and #FF5A00.
- Accent: approve #f6ad55 as the secondary light-orange accent.
- Add gray #868686, which your site uses but the bible does not list.
- Remove the auto-replace rules that turn #E8611A and #C9A84C into rust.
- Fonts: lock Montserrat for headings and Lato for body, to match the site.