Direction 04 · Sage Color story · Sage olive Type · Baskervville · body line-height opens up to 1

Round 03 · spec set 2026.05 Status · sibling variant Light + dark · restrained accent

Referent

The senior partner you can’t afford, on retainer for the practice you actually run. This direction holds the reference: the warm cream and olive bronze the live site already speaks.

Paper Linen paper · #F4F1E5

Accent Sage olive · #7A8970

Ink Near-black · #0C0E0B

Type lead Baskervville · serif

01 / Color story

A warm paper, a single bronze — the rest is type.

Restrained palette. Two neutrals carry 92% of any view; the bronze accent is reserved for emphasis, links, and a single dot after the wordmark. Dark mode is the same brand at midnight: paper inverts to warm ink, bronze rises to hold contrast.

Paper · linen paper oklch(0.965 0.025 92)Light · #FFF5D4Dark · oklch(0.18 0.012 80)

Paper · light card oklch(0.985 0.012 90)elevated moduleDark · oklch(0.22 0.012 80)

Paper · deep section oklch(0.94 0.028 92)banded backgroundDark · oklch(0.14 0.012 80)

Ink · primary oklch(0.16 0.005 80)headline · bodyDark · oklch(0.94 0.018 88)

Ink · mute oklch(0.40 0.012 80)secondary typeDark · oklch(0.72 0.012 82)

Ink · soft oklch(0.58 0.012 82)captions · metaDark · oklch(0.55 0.012 82)

Rule oklch(0.82 0.018 88)hairline bordersDark · oklch(0.30 0.012 80)

Accent · sage olive oklch(0.62 0.05 85)≤8% of any fold · single useDark · oklch(0.72 0.07 85)

Color rules

Bronze never touches body text. Accent on links, eyebrows, the dot, single emphasis only.
Two paper tones max per view. No tertiary tint without a structural reason.
No gradients on the brand. Solids only.
Selection uses ink-on-bronze. Focus rings inherit bronze.
Dark mode is a swap, not a redesign — paper inverts to ink, accent gains +0.10 lightness.
The bronze appears once per fold. Two bronzes on screen is too many bronzes.

02 / Typography

A transitional serif holds the brand. Sans is utility.

Baskervville (Tiempos analog) carries display, deck, and body. Inter is reserved for UI controls and eyebrows. JetBrains Mono is metadata only — captions, file refs, run timestamps.

For lawyers who actually read what they sign.

A referent is the actual thing a word points at — the concrete reality behind legal language. The product is the referent: the source you check before you sign your name. Discovery doesn’t sleep, and neither does the system that watches the docket.

Baskervville Display · deck · body

Inter UI · buttons · eyebrows

JetBrains Mono Metadata · captions · refs

Production target License Tiempos Headline + Söhne. The shape of the decision survives the swap.

Aa Hero 96–112 / -3.5%

Aa Display 56–72 / -3%

Aa Heading 28–34 / -1.5%

Aa Subhead 19–22 italic

Aa Body 17 / 1.55

Aa Caption 10.5 mono · 0.18em

03 / Applied · landing hero

The current marketing hero, rebuilt cleanly in the sage direction.

Same copy as referent.law. Different surface. The variants diverge here, not in the copy.

Referent Product Features About Pricing Join the waitlist

A law firm that runs on command.

Built for Solo + small firms

Useful in Week one

Not in A 12-month rollout

Stop working inside dashboards, inboxes, and forms. Tell Referent what needs to happen — the agents handle the operational work. You approve every critical step.

Join the waitlist See the product →

Intake handled for you.

Pre-matter workflow runs itself. Context, proposal, payment link — sent.

Manage matters by command.

Open matters, assign work, run research, draft documents — by command.

You approve every critical step.

The agents do the work. You hold the pen on every action that matters.

Email and files file themselves.

Every message and document lands in the right matter, automatically.

04 / Product surface · dashboard

The brand applied to the working surface.

Same paper, ink, and accent — sidebar, inbox, document detail. The brand should feel continuous from marketing into the app, not switch personalities at the login screen.

Marcus Yeo 9:42

Re: Settlement draft, page 4 redline

Thanks for the turnaround. The clause on indemnification still reads ambiguously to me — paragraph 3(b) sweeps in claims arising "directly or indirectly," which could be read…

Mendez v. Pacific Unread
Diana Park, Esq. 8:10

USCIS · NOID for I-129 H-1B amendment

USCIS issued a Notice of Intent to Deny on the Okwu amendment. Response window is 33 days. We need to address the specialty-occupation concerns specifically…

Okwu — H-1B
Ngata Family Office Wed

Trust funding — final wire instructions

Confirming the wire of $2.4M into the irrevocable trust account on Friday. Please confirm the account references one more time before we instruct the bank…

Ngata estate
Court of Appeals · Filing Wed

Notice: brief due 2026-05-14

Reminder: appellant’s opening brief is due in five days. The clerk has set the page limit at 12,000 words. Please ensure ECF deposit by close of business…

Mendez v. Pacific

From Marcus Yeo · marcus@yeo-law.com To Seva Rybakov

Re: Settlement draft, page 4 redline

9:42 AM · linked to Mendez v. Pacific Holdings

Seva,

Thanks for the turnaround. The clause on indemnification still reads ambiguously to me — paragraph 3(b) sweeps in claims arising "directly or indirectly," which could be read to cover third-party actions our client never authorized.

Can we tighten the language to actions taken at the direction of, or on behalf of, the released party? I’m happy to redline if that’s faster. Otherwise let me know your preference and I’ll send a clean draft this afternoon.

Best,
Marcus

05 / Voice · headlines · anti-brand

Plainspoken. Confident. Never corporate.

The senior associate who left V100 to go solo, talking to a peer. We say the work and let the work speak.

Discovery doesn’t sleep. Neither does the docket.

A second opinion. In writing.

We read every footnote so you don’t.

Built for the practice you actually run — not the brochure.

We are NOT

Harvey’s navy & gold glass tower.
Legora’s nordic SaaS gradient.
Clio’s mid-2010s practice-mgmt clip art.
Default AI dark mode with a violet accent.
A tool that needs an IT department.

06 / Specification

When to choose Sage.

The brand wants to feel calmer than bronze and one degree more contemporary. Sage reads modern-traditional.
The product is long-form, attention-heavy, and the audience is reading at length. The slower rhythm helps.
You want to differentiate from the legal-tech default warm-tan-and-dark-blue without going to gray.

When NOT to choose Sage.

The brand wants to feel urgent, present, alert. Sage is purposefully still.
The audience associates green with payments / Quicken / accounting (US small-firm partners often do).
You need a single decisive accent that photographs at any size. Sage at small sizes loses chroma fast.

--paperoklch(0.955 0.020 110) · light

oklch(0.19 0.012 145) · dark

--paper-2oklch(0.978 0.012 110) · light

oklch(0.23 0.012 145) · dark

--paper-3oklch(0.93 0.024 110) · light

oklch(0.15 0.012 145) · dark

--inkoklch(0.16 0.012 130) · light

oklch(0.93 0.018 110) · dark

--ruleoklch(0.83 0.018 120) · light

oklch(0.30 0.014 145) · dark

--accentoklch(0.60 0.05 145) · light

oklch(0.72 0.07 145) · dark

--easecubic-bezier(0.22, 1, 0.36, 1)

--radius0 · nothing rounds