First Breath

Why it looks this way.

Typography

Domine sets the headlines. It was designed for reading on screens, so it is sturdy rather than delicate, and its rounded serifs feel like a handwritten care plan more than a hospital leaflet. Figtree carries the body text at 18 pixels because a lot of this site gets read late at night, tired, on a phone.

• Domine headlines
• Figtree body text

Color

The deep rose is the camellia, Alabama's state flower, which blooms in Montgomery yards in the middle of winter. The green is its leaf. We kept the pink dark and grown-up on purpose: this is health care for adult women, and baby-shower pastels would undercut that. Both themes pass WCAG AA.

• Page #F8F0EF
• Cards #FFFFFF
• Text #27191E
• Brand #992A4B
• Accent #2E5D4A

Layout

A fixed sidebar keeps every page, the phone number and the address in view on desktop, the way a well-run clinic keeps its front desk in sight. On a phone it folds into one menu button. Six pages, each named for something a mother is trying to do.

Pages: Home, Get a doula, Classes & circles, After the baby, Our doulas, Give a birth kit

Hero

Three photographs in a staggered row, a mother walking to her appointment, a newborn's fingers in her parents' hands and a hand resting on a bump, with the headline laid across them. It shows the whole arc of the program before a word is read, and it leads with a Black mother, because Black mothers are who First Breath was started for.

Calls to action

The one action that matters most is Request a doula, so it sits at the top of the sidebar on every page. The others are named for real moments: Text the warmline, Come to Sister Circle, Give a birth kit. None of them say Learn more.

Photography

Mothers, newborns and the women who sit with them. We avoided clinical images of monitors and gloves; the hospital appears once, in black and white, from a sibling's point of view.

Accessibility

Large type, generous spacing, pill buttons with big tap targets, and a check-in form that says exactly who will read it. Crisis numbers appear wherever someone might be in distress, written out in full so they can be dialed without hunting.