Bedside Chaplains

Why it looks this way.

Typography

Petrona sets the headlines in a soft medium weight with a light italic for second lines; it has the warmth of a handwritten note without pretending to be one. The body is Atkinson Hyperlegible, designed by the Braille Institute, at 18px. Its letters are deliberately distinct (no confusing l, I and 1), which matters when the reader is exhausted or medicated.

• Petrona headlines
• Atkinson Hyperlegible body text

Color

The palette comes from the room at three in the morning: the pale green-gray of hospital linen, the deep teal of the privacy curtain and the amber of the one reading lamp left on. We avoided clinical white and alarm red entirely. The dark theme is a night shift rather than an inversion, with the teal lifted and the lamp-amber warmed so both stay clear against the dark.

• Page #F0F3F2
• Cards #FFFFFF
• Text #1C292C
• Brand #2A5B66
• Accent #B4712E

Layout

A classic top bar, because nobody in a hospital should have to learn a navigation pattern. Six plainly named pages, a single action on the right and a phone number one tap away. The request form has its own anchor so nurses can text a family the link straight to it.

Pages: Ask for a chaplain, Every faith, When time is short, Hospitals, Grief groups, Volunteer

Hero

The home page opens with the request form itself. Most visitors arrive because someone is ill right now, so the form asks for five things and nothing more, while the reassurance beside it answers the questions people are too tired to ask: how long, how much, and will you try to convert my mother.

Calls to action

"Ask for a chaplain" is the main action because it is a request, not a booking. Every other action names exactly what happens: call the on-call chaplain, ask for a bedside vigil, join a grief group, start volunteer training. The giving action is "Fund a night shift", since nights are what donations actually pay for.

Photography

Only real bedside moments: hands held, a visitor in a chair, a lamp and candles. We left out stock photos of smiling clinicians and anything that looks like a hospital advertisement. Nobody in a photo is identifiable as a specific patient, and there are no photos of people at their most frail.

Accessibility

Large, high-contrast type, form fields with visible labels, and a phone number written out in full wherever a form appears, for people who would rather talk. Crisis numbers are in plain text, not hidden behind links. Both color themes keep body text above 7:1.