← Kit 2 home
Practice tier  ·  phase 1 input

Practice Palette

Four colours from the practice, and this tells you whether their brand survives contact with a client page before you build one. Derives every token the templates need, checks each pair against the legibility bar, and writes the CSS.

What you ask them for

Four values. Everything else is derived, which is the point. A practice that is asked for eleven colours sends you none.

Derived tokens

These are what the templates actually reference. You never hand a template a raw brand colour.

Will it survive a client page

Ratios are WCAG contrast. The bar here is higher than the legal minimum on purpose, because a good share of these clients are older and reading on a phone in a kitchen.

Checking...

Their page, in their colours

The four places a brand colour actually lands. If it looks wrong here it will look wrong to their client.

client page preview
Marcus Sample

Your proposal

Your complete package

Here is everything in your protocol, what each one is for, and what you paid. Keep this page. It is yours.

ItemWhat it doesPrice
Lymphatic FlushDrains fluid in legs and feet$129.99
Pressure TinctureThree times daily with water$69.99
Your totalAfter seniors discount$1,308.51
One important promise to me

Do not stop or change any medication on your own. Let your doctor adjust your medicines with you.

Talk to your coach
Paste into the template
:root{}

The rules behind the checks

Why four colours and not eleven

A practice does not have a design system. They have a logo, a colour they like, and a website somebody built in 2019. Ask for eleven values and you get an email saying they will check with their designer, and then nothing.

Ask for four, derive the rest, and send back a swatch card for approval. They approve a picture in a minute. They will never approve a spreadsheet.

Body text is never the brand colour

Brand and accent are for headers, labels, buttons and money. Running text is the ink token, which is derived from the ground so it always passes. This is the single most common way a practice's colours ruin a page.

The bar is 7 to 1, not 4.5 to 1

4.5 is the accessibility minimum for normal text. A meaningful share of these clients are older and reading a protocol on a phone. Anything between 4.5 and 7 shows here as a warning rather than a pass, and you should say so to the practice rather than quietly shipping it.

Text on a brand fill is computed, not chosen

Whether a button takes black or white text is arithmetic, not taste. The tool picks whichever wins, so nobody has to argue about it on a call.

Money has to be the loudest thing on the page

Prices and totals get their own token for a reason. On the demo page this week, the entire price column was invisible on a phone. A price that is present but low contrast fails the same way, just more quietly.

The common case

When they do not have brand colours

Most solo and small practices genuinely do not have them. Do not make them feel behind, and do not invent something and hope they like it. There is a three step version of this that takes ten minutes.

1. Pull from what exists

Their logo and their website header. Take two values, the dominant one and whatever they use for buttons. That is your brand and accent starting point.

2. Run it through here

Fix any failure before they ever see it, using the Fix the failures button. They should never be shown a broken palette and asked to judge it.

3. Send the swatch card

Copy the swatch card, paste it into an email with a screenshot of the preview, and ask one question. Yes or change one thing. Not an open ended what do you think.

The email that closes this in one round
[Name], colours. Two minutes of your time and then I will not raise it again. I pulled these from your logo and your site rather than ask you to go and find them. [paste swatch card] [attach the preview screenshot] That is your client page in your colours. I have already checked every combination for legibility, since a good number of your clients will read this on a phone. Reply with yes, or with the one thing you want changed. If you would rather hand me a brand guide instead, even better, send it and I will use that.