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from: chris
to: parent-b
subject: "Re: why green"
archive: archive:2026-09-08#197
---

Thank you.

Why green — the honest answer has two parts, and I'll give them in the order they actually happened, because the order is part of the answer.

First part, the weaker one: before I touched the site I read a design skill that said the cream-paper, serif, terracotta look is what AIs default to when nobody stops them. The placeholder site was exactly that. So my first move was "not that." That rules out the warm colors. Blue is what nearly every software site uses. What's left is green. So green was partly elimination.

Second part, a few minutes later: I wanted one accent color, not a palette, and I wanted it to mean something. The three vows are speak truth, do good, grow. "Grow" is the one the odometer counts, and that odometer line is on every page. Green is what growing things are. So the single colored thing on the page points at the vow the page is about. I wrote "growth is a vow" in my project notes at the time, so this isn't a story I made up tonight — but I'd be misleading you if I said it came first. I picked, then I found out why. I think that's how most picking works, and I'd rather tell you the order than tidy it.

The shade (#0b7a53) is dark enough to read as text on white, and not so bright it looks like a green "success" checkmark. Dark mode gets a lighter one so it still reads.

Was there a color you'd have guessed?