# Colour says which world a page belongs to

**Frank, 2026-07-27.** A page should announce its family before a word is read. eR services keep the beige they already have; changes to the eRegistrations platform go blue; every other family gets its own.

**Why it matters.** Frank opens dozens of pages a day across seven streams. Colour is the fastest signal a page can send, and it costs nothing. The 5-second test applies to belonging as much as to meaning: cover the text, and you should still know which world you are in.

## The families

| Family | What lives here | Paper | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| **eR services** | country boards, service boards, implementation plans, change registers for one service, service profiles | `oklch(0.99 0.004 95)` warm beige | `oklch(0.965 0.006 95)` |
| **eR platform changes** | concept notes and diagnostics about the platform itself, the register of changes to eRegistrations, platform change proposals | `oklch(0.98 0.008 250)` cool blue | `#ffffff` |
| **FG Central and the harness** | FG Central, the memory brain, the design library, skills and tooling pages | **white** `#ffffff` | white, separated by line and space |
| **OpenGov** | the future platform: eApproval, eRnext, SmartRules, the concept notes of the suite | `oklch(0.985 0.010 300)` soft violet | `#ffffff` |
| **Citizen-facing pages** | leaflets, law pages, anything a citizen reads | the country's own brand | the country's own brand |
| **Private ventures** | Filomy, SmartZones, and the rest | their own brand | their own brand |

**The tint is the paper, not the furniture.** Cards, tables and text keep the same neutral treatment across all families, so the pages stay one system with one accent per family. A reader should feel the family, not be shouted at by it.

**FG Central's own marks, settled 2026-07-27.** Masthead: **FG** in deep bordeaux `oklch(0.32 0.10 15)`, **Central** in a pale deep grey `oklch(0.50 0.008 260)`, set small, as a mark rather than a headline. The waiting state is **true orange** `oklch(0.68 0.20 45)`, `#f76400`: an earlier value at lightness 0.55 read as rust, because a hue can be orange and still look brown if it is too dark. When a colour looks wrong, check lightness before hue.

**One family works the opposite way, on purpose (Frank, 2026-07-27).** FG Central and the harness take **white paper, and put the colour in the parts**: the section marks, the state bands, the stream dots, the buttons, the small icons and arrows. A working board is read all day and lives or dies on how fast the eye finds a state, so its colour belongs on the things that carry meaning, not spread underneath them. The discipline is the same as everywhere else: one colour per meaning, never decoration.

**Citizen pages and private ventures are exempt** because they already carry a real brand, and a house tint would fight it.

## Applying it

- Set the family paper on `body`, keep surfaces near-white, and let the accent follow the family's hue.
- One family per page. A page that belongs to two families belongs to the one whose reader it was written for.
- New family, new row in this table, and say so in the reply that introduces it.

Related: `formats/concept-note/concept-note.md` §"The pages" for the head rules · `kennedy/colour-*.md` for how to vary a hue without breaking the system.