Brand redesign

Source: the research brief (see the Research brief page). Everything here is a design direction, not a claim about Candid8.

1. Positioning

One line (draft): "Houston's certified-MBE technology partner, business internet, hardware, software licensing and a help desk, with one accountable team."

• Who: Houston/Texas multi-site SMB and mid-market operators; corporate supplier-diversity & procurement buyers; primes needing Tier 2 diverse partners.
• Promise: fewer vendors, one owner, clear renewals. Procurement-ready (MBE proof, W-9/insurance/supplier packet on request) and operator-friendly (real help desk, real ticket status).
• Proof rules: MBE claim shown exactly as the company states it, with a "verify at Houston MSDC" link and certificate PDF once Candid8 supplies them; no SLA numbers, years, customer counts, partner badges or case studies until real and approved. Everything else labeled UNKNOWN / "Candid8 to confirm" in the build.
• Angle vs other providers (Research brief §3): not "biggest" (Netsync) or "security-only" (HTL 365) but "the supplier-diversity-ready, single-throat-to-choke IT partner."

2. Voice & tone

• Plain, confident, procurement-literate. Short sentences. Verbs first ("Get a quote", "Renew a license", "Open a ticket").
• Warm Houston business tone, direct, not salesy; no hype ("powerhouse", "unleash", "blazing"). Keep the playful tagline as a sign-off only: "When IT comes to tech, we're your best Candid8."
• Never: invented numbers, "24/7" without the tier that includes it, "authorized partner" without proof, compliance claims.
• Reading level ~8th grade; every page has one primary action and one procurement action.

3. Name & logo direction

• Name stays: Candid8. Legal line in footer: "SKY Partner LLC dba Candid8" (spelling to be confirmed, Research brief §7).
• Current logo: /images/Candid8_Logo1.png on the live site (not yet reviewed in detail; source files UNKNOWN → request originals).
• Direction A (recommended, evolution): clean wordmark "Candid" + the 8 drawn as two linked loops (connection / two parties / certificate seal). The 8 carries the accent color; works as favicon/app icon and as the MBE-seal-adjacent mark.
• Direction B (minimal): all-lowercase "candid8" wordmark, 8 in accent, no icon.
• Never imitate the NMSDC logo or imply NMSDC authorship; the NMSDC mark is used only per NMSDC usage rules, in the MBE section, with the certificate #.
• Clear space = height of the 8; min size 24 px icon / 96 px wordmark.

4. Color palette (draft tokens )

Current site accent is navy #1C4F72 (from the live H1). Keep it as the anchor.

Contrast: ink on sand ≥ 12:1; white on navy ≥ 11:1; amber is for fills with navy text (not white text). Verify all pairs to WCAG 2.2 AA in QA.

5. Type

• Display/UI: the new type set (already used on the live site via Fontshare; confirm license/self-host before ship), fallback system-ui.
• Data/tables/ticket IDs: a clean mono (e.g., IBM Plex Mono, OFL).
• Scale 16/18 body, 1.25 modular steps; H1 is static text (never JS-typed). Respect prefers-reduced-motion.

6. Page map (new site)

Global: skip-link, sticky Get-a-quote + Open-a-ticket, footer with legal name, MBE cert, canonical contact, sitemap/robots/canonical/OG/JSON-LD (Organization + LocalBusiness) built in.

7. Imagery plan (people using the product + places)

Rule: lead with people using the service and places where work happens; no logo-only/abstract hero.

• Hero: a Houston-office IT person helping a coworker at a desk / a technician at a network closet, people, faces, human scale.
• Home strips: (1) help-desk agent with headset + customer on laptop; (2) technician installing/inspecting network gear at a small-business site; (3) procurement/ops lead reviewing a supplier packet with a laptop; (4) small warehouse / medical office / construction trailer office with working Wi-Fi (places).
• Places: Houston downtown and business parks as context shots, only from real or verified images. The current site uses one generic AI-generated city illustration that is not verified as Houston and is captioned "AI-generated city illustration".
• Sourcing order: (1) real Candid8 team/job photos supplied by client (none known, UNKNOWN); (2) licensed stock; (3) AI illustration. The current site uses (3): AI-generated illustrations created with an image generator for Agent Luci, not photos of Candid8 work. Until real photos exist every image gets a visible caption "AI-generated illustration · not a client job photo" (alt text says so too). No invented captions naming clients, reviews, or addresses.
• Diversity shown naturally and respectfully; no implication about real employees' identities.
• Testimonials: keep the four existing quotes only with owner's OK and "Google review, as posted by the company" label; no avatars implying real photos unless supplied.

8. Quality bars for the build

Static H1; WCAG 2.2 AA; LCP < 2.5 s target (measure, don't claim); form with CAPTCHA/anti-spam, consent line, server confirmation; no analytics until the owner says yes.

9. Redesign v2: what actually shipped (stamp 20261002c onward)

This section replaces the palette and type draft above. The shipped look is a full rebuild, not a polish.

• Palette: ink #07131D and navy #0C2233 for dark sections; paper #F2EBDC, bone #FBF7EE and sand #E4D9C0 for light sections; one accent, amber #FFB21A (burnt #9A4300 for amber-colored text on paper); mint #6EE3B0 only for the LIVE status dot.
• Type (all open licensed, self-hosted): Big Shoulders Display for headlines, Instrument Serif italic for the accent word in each headline, Instrument Sans for body text, IBM Plex Mono for small labels. the new type set is no longer used.
• Buttons: plain labels only. "Book a call", "Get a quote", "See how it works". They sit in the header, in the first screen of every page and, on phones, in a fixed bar at the bottom.
• Diagrams on the page: the service path (ISP, hardware, help desk, security and cloud), the twelve-agent HQ (draft only, a person says yes) and the lead-to-customer flow are inline SVG on the home page and on every service page, each marked LIVE, SAMPLE or ROADMAP. "How it works" is in the main menu and points to /architecture/, which keeps the full set of five.
• Images: four AI-generated illustrations plus custom vector art, each labeled "AI-generated illustration, not a client job photo". Where a picture was weak it was dropped in favor of custom SVG.