Why Home Front Chaplaincy looks the way it does
A site for a small chaplaincy that serves families at Fort Bragg while a service member is deployed, training or coming home. It is built to be read by a tired spouse on a phone at 10 PM, so the chaplain line and the next Tuesday night are never more than a glance away.
- Built for
- Spouses, children and parents of active-duty soldiers at Fort Bragg, and the volunteers and churches who help them.
- Navigation
- Two-tier header. A thin utility strip carries times, phone and language; the main bar below holds pages and the action.
- Pages
- Home, While they're gone, Coming home, Kids, Help a family, Talk to a chaplain
- Hero
- Three doors instead of one headline: visitors pick the path that fits them (for example New here, Need help, Want to help)
Typography
Antonio is a tall, tightly fitted gothic, the shape of the lettering on unit signs and duffel-bag stencils, so headlines feel familiar to this audience without dressing the site in camouflage. Body copy is Public Sans, which the U.S. government commissioned for its own websites: plain, sturdy and easy on tired eyes. IBM Plex Mono sets the times and labels like a duty roster.
Color
Dress-blue navy and a yellow-ribbon gold, the color military families have tied round porch posts since the 1970s. The background is a cool sage-gray, the color of the Sandhills longleaf in winter, so the page never feels clinical. In dark mode the navy lifts to a soft service blue and the gold warms, because most visits happen late at night.
Layout and navigation
A two-tier header: the slim top strip always shows the 24-hour chaplain line, Tuesday's time and where we are, and the main bar holds the pages and one action. Families under stress should never have to hunt for the phone number.
The hero
The site opens with three doors instead of a slogan: my person is deployed, my person is coming home, I want to help a family. Those three readers want completely different things, and each gets there in one tap.
Calls to action
The main button is 'Talk to a chaplain' because a confidential conversation is the thing this ministry offers that nobody else on post can. Every other button names a concrete thing: save a seat Tuesday, hold a retreat spot, adopt a family for one deployment.
Photography
Real-looking families, support circles and ceremonies rather than combat or recruiting imagery. Uniforms appear where they belong, at homecomings and in the support group, and the rest of the photos show ordinary home life carrying on.
Accessibility
Square, high-contrast buttons with clear focus rings, body text at 17px, and every time written in full. The Military Crisis Line (988, then press 1) appears beside every form that touches on hard things.
Type system
- DisplayAntonioAntonio is a tall, narrow gothic in the family of stencilled crate lettering and unit signboards, and it fits a long headline into a phone screen without shrinking it.
- TextPublic SansPublic Sans was drawn for U.S. government websites. It is plain, very legible and already familiar to anyone who has filled in a form on a federal site.
- AccentIBM Plex MonoA typewriter-like mono for times, dates and labels, the way a duty roster or orders read.
Colour and contrast
Every text pairing is checked against WCAG 2.2 in both themes.
Light theme
| Pairing | Sample | Ratio | WCAG |
|---|
| Body text on page | Aa | 15.11:1 | AAA |
| Body text on cards | Aa | 16.87:1 | AAA |
| Secondary text | Aa | 6.02:1 | AA |
| Links | Aa | 10.99:1 | AAA |
| Button text | Aa | 12.72:1 | AAA |
| Accent label text | Aa | 9.23:1 | AAA |
| Text on dark bands | Aa | 15.11:1 | AAA |
| Muted text on dark bands | Aa | 7.91:1 | AAA |
| Text on brand bands | Aa | 12.72:1 | AAA |
| Muted text on brand bands | Aa | 7.89:1 | AAA |
Dark theme
| Pairing | Sample | Ratio | WCAG |
|---|
| Body text on page | Aa | 14.97:1 | AAA |
| Body text on cards | Aa | 13.3:1 | AAA |
| Secondary text | Aa | 6.67:1 | AA |
| Links | Aa | 8.47:1 | AAA |
| Button text | Aa | 8.65:1 | AAA |
| Accent label text | Aa | 10.74:1 | AAA |
| Text on dark bands | Aa | 15.86:1 | AAA |
| Muted text on dark bands | Aa | 7.98:1 | AAA |
| Text on brand bands | Aa | 8.65:1 | AAA |
| Muted text on brand bands | Aa | 5.34:1 | AA |