Module 2 · Position and look

Your name is the logo

Still Stage 1. Now the look. By the end of this lesson brand-strategy.md will record your name set as a wordmark, a palette whose contrast has been calculated rather than guessed, a type scale, and a plan for your photograph, and your folder will hold the three logo files the kit makes.

What design does, and doesn’t do

A widely quoted Stanford study from 2003 asked people to explain why they trusted one website over another. “Design look” was the most mentioned reason, in 46.1% of comments overall and 41.8% for health sites, which were near the bottom of the ranking.

So looks matter, and health sites are judged on them a little less than most. The practical reading: a careful, calm page keeps you from being ruled out; your words and your face are what get you chosen. The design goal is not “impressive”. It is “nothing here makes this harder.”

Your name is the logo

A wordmark is a logo made of a name set in a chosen typeface, with no picture. Designers who build websites for therapists arrive at the same answer independently: the product is a person, a symbol puts distance between the visitor and that person, and nearly every symbol in this field has been used thousands of times. Your own name or a practice name both work.

Your photograph is the biggest visual decision

A visitor is weighing a specific person they may soon tell their hardest thing to, and people judge faces quickly. A real photograph of you is the one element nobody else’s site can copy. Stock photography can fill a background. It never stands in for you, for a client, or for your office.

The brief is warm and competent at the same time: a small real smile or a warm neutral expression, whichever fits the people you serve; eyes to the lens; soft window light; camera at eye level; a plain wall or your real office behind you; what you actually wear to sessions. Use the same photo on your website and your directory profiles, so the visitor recognizes you.

If you shoot it on a phone

1. Clean the lens with a soft cloth.
2. Stand facing a big window and turn off every lamp and overhead light. If direct sun comes in, hang a white sheet over the window.
3. Put the phone at your eye level on a stack of books. Use the rear camera, and the 2× lens if your phone has one.
4. Turn Portrait Mode off, and stand well away from the wall instead; distance blurs the background more cleanly.
5. Use the self-timer, take a lot of frames, and talk between them so your expression isn’t held.
6. Edit only brightness, highlights and color cast. No smoothing, no filters.

If you can afford a photographer, it is one of the best uses of money on this whole project. Expect a few hundred dollars, and check prices locally.

Color: intensity matters, hue mostly doesn’t

“Blue means trust” and “green is calming” are folklore; the color-psychology research behind them is inconsistent and hard to replicate. What holds up is duller and more useful: large areas of bright, saturated color are physically demanding for some visitors. Keep big areas quiet, and use one confident color in small amounts, on buttons and links.

Then there is contrast: how different a text color is from its background, written as a ratio. The accessibility floor is 4.5:1 for body text, and 3:1 for large text (roughly 24 pixels and up), buttons, borders and icons. Anything under 3:1 is decoration only.

That sage button is on a great many therapy websites, and it is the one button the whole site exists to get clicked. The same goes for pale grey body text chosen because it “looks softer”: #999999 on white is 2.85:1 and fails, while #767676 is 4.54:1, the lightest grey that passes on white.

Six starting palettes, with the contrast already calculated

These are the six in the kit’s brand-strategy skill. Every ratio is against white and was calculated with the standard formula, not estimated. Your site may be warm or cool; what matters is that the numbers hold.

Type that is easy to read at 2am

Most therapy sites use the same handful of free typefaces: Montserrat, Lato, Playfair Display, Cormorant Garamond, Poppins, Open Sans, Raleway and Josefin Sans. Picking a typeface with real character is the cheapest way to look different, and nobody has ever thought a clinician was unserious because of a font. Free alternatives on Google Fonts that hold up at reading sizes include Source Serif 4, Literata, Newsreader, Fraunces, Public Sans, Inter, Instrument Sans and Libre Franklin. Use one face for headings and one for body text, or one face at a few sizes.

Before you commit, type Illinois 1O0 in it. If the capital I, the lowercase l, the number 1, the capital O and the zero aren’t all distinguishable, pick another.

Body text is left-aligned, never centered in paragraphs, and a column no wider than about 65 characters. If you want the site to feel softer, soften the headings, never the contrast of the body text.

Paste this into Claude

Let's finish Stage 1, the look. Keep following your brand-strategy skill and use the
positioning we already wrote in brand-strategy.md.

1. Set my name "[Name, credential letters exactly as my board writes them]" as a wordmark in
   [typeface, or suggest two from your skill's list]. No symbol.
2. Propose two palettes from the table in your skill, adapted to what I told you about my
   practice. Show the hex code, the role and the calculated contrast ratio for every color.
   If you change a value, recalculate and state the new ratio.
3. Give me a heading and body typeface pairing and the type scale.
4. Write my photograph plan: the phone steps, a photographer, or a no-face alternative. Ask me
   which.

Hard rules: no lotus, tree, butterfly, hands, path, stones or sunrise. No sage green. No brain
or head imagery, no semicolon unless I ask for it, no badge, wreath, shield or crest. Invent
nothing about me.

Then write the visual half of brand-strategy.md, save brand/logo.svg, brand/logo-light.svg and
brand/monogram.svg, save a snapshot, and summarize it for me in plain language.

What to check: every color has a hex code and a stated ratio, and no text color is under 4.5:1 on its background. The credential letters on the wordmark match your license exactly. Open brand/logo.svg and look at it: your name should read cleanly, with no picture beside it. The photograph plan names what you chose, not a default. Anything that doesn’t feel like your practice is yours to change.

Then check it like a stranger would

Start a fresh conversation for this one, so you get an outside eye rather than the thing that just made it.

Read brand-strategy.md and look at brand/logo.svg. Answer as a skeptical stranger who has never
heard of me.

1. If you covered my name, could you tell this apart from any other therapy practice website?
   Answer yes or no first, then explain.
2. Name every visual cliché still in it.
3. What is the single most distinctive thing about it?
4. Give me the three changes that would matter most, in order.

Be direct. Don't be encouraging.

What to check: if the answer to the first question is yes, act on the three changes before you move on. If it names something you chose on purpose, you can keep it; you are the one who decides.

The review videos below show a clinician critiquing real therapy websites. The second is an earlier episode from 2023 and runs about 33 minutes, so watch the newer one first. Some of the sites you will see offer a free consultation; if you see clients in Florida, that offer carries an extra statement, and the compliance lesson (Module 6) has the rule and the exact text.

Watch this step

A clinician reviewing real therapist websites out loud. Watch the first one. The second is an earlier episode from 2023 and runs about 33 minutes, so treat it as extra. If any site you see offers a free consultation and you see clients in Florida, that state expects an extra statement; Module 6 has it. It’s from an independent creator — credited below, so go give them a follow.

17:36

33:18