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Revize · Town website · Approved August 2026

Haw River, North Carolina

Haw River is a small Piedmont town built around a historic textile mill, with the motto “Our River. Our Town.” The direction from kickoff was simplicity: a solid hero panel, bill pay up front, and nothing busy.

Visual DesignColor SystemKickoffIteration
Home1440 × 3738
Home design

The brief

Keep it simple, put bill pay up front

The town was replacing a dated site and gave the designer free rein on color. Its 2019 tree logo with the “Our River. Our Town.” tagline goes in the navigation, and the roughly fifty-year-old official seal goes in the footer.

I ran the kickoff from a deck built for the meeting, and the decisions came straight out of it: one navigation bar with no utility bar, no social media anywhere because the town doesn't use it, and online bill pay as the most prominent action on the page.

The approach

When the color belongs to the neighbors

The first concept used a deep green and gold drawn from the logo. The town turned the green down twice, and the deciding reason wasn't the shade: neighboring Green Level uses a similar green. So I retired it entirely and blended a blue system from three palettes the client picked, giving each palette one job.

HeroA large photo of the river with a solid, angled overlay panel instead of a thin transparent one, carrying the motto and two calls to action.
Bill payOnline bill pay is a button in the hero and the first quick-link card directly below it.
Palette blendOne palette sets the identity blue and gold, another supplies the deepest navy for the footer, and the third gives the light background bands. A darker gold was added so gold can appear as text on light backgrounds.
Side benefitNavy separates cleanly from the trees in the hero photo. That fixed the client's complaint that the green panel blended into the foliage, without changing the photo.
AnnouncementsNews is called Announcements, and a post without a photo falls back to the official seal knocked out on brand color, so nothing ever waits on an image.
EventsA calendar grid and a list side by side, filtered to Meetings and Events.

Palette · contrast measured against white

  • River Blue#00509D7.97:1 on white · AAAPrimary
  • Midnight#00296B13.73:1 on white · AAAHero panel
  • Deep Navy#0B132B18.38:1 on white · AAAFooter
  • Gold#FDC5001.60:1 on white · accentFills and dark surfaces only
  • Gold Ink#8A5A005.93:1 on white · AAGold as text
  • Serene#E7ECEFSurfaceLight bands

The rest of the approved set · desktop, 1440px

Interior page1440 × 2429
Interior page design
Interactions and menus1440 × 3738
Interactions and menus design

Outcome

A full retheme without a rebuild

Because the design was bound to variables, the switch from green to blue propagated through every board. An audit still found 18 elements hardcoded to the old green, and all of them were rebound before the client saw the revision.

632
variable bindings carried the retheme. Afterward the homepage passed with zero contrast failures across 135 text and background pairs.

Next in the practice

Williams, Arizona↗