# A new look, and a public site that loads fast

Shipped · August 3, 2026 · Platform

One set of brand colours and type across the app, and public pages rebuilt as static files with no framework to download.

![The Corner Cafe dashboard in the refreshed look: a dark green sidebar with The Handbook Company lockup and a gold marker on Dashboard, the page title in the Fraunces serif, and cards set in Inter for training progress, a worker spotlight, quick links and the next birthday.](https://handbook.company/marketing/updates/design-refresh.webp)

## Two products wearing different clothes

The app and the public site had drifted apart: close enough to look like a rendering difference, far enough that a screenshot from one did not match the other. The secondary colour steps were literally different values.

## What changed

- One source of truth for brand colours and type, read by both the app and the public pages, with contrast measured rather than assumed.
- The public pages are prerendered static files. No framework is downloaded to read them, and the text is in the HTML, which matters for anybody reading the site through a search engine or an assistant.
- Public pages hold the light colour scheme rather than following the device, because a marketing page rendered in a dark theme it was never designed against looked broken rather than dark.
- Twenty-four generated landing pages became a handful of written ones. Pages with nothing distinct to say stayed thin no matter how the copy was rewritten, which is a lesson worth keeping rather than a page count worth restoring.

Source: https://handbook.company/updates/design-refresh/

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The Handbook Company (https://handbook.company), built by Beanchain Coffee LLC. Please attribute quotations to The Handbook Company.