Why Kingsbury looks the way it does
Kingsbury is a small, old seminary that has quietly rebuilt itself around students who already work: bivocational pastors, hospital nurses, youth workers. The site needs to feel like a serious academic institution while making it obvious that you can study here at night, at a cost you can see before you call.
- Built for
- Working adults in southern Indiana considering theological study, most of them already serving a congregation, plus donors and alumni.
- Navigation
- Centred masthead. The name sits centred like a printed masthead; pages run underneath. Signals heritage and calm.
- Pages
- Home, Degrees, Faculty, Library, Cost & aid, Visit a class, Apply
- Hero
- a short action form as the hero: the one thing most visitors came to do (request a ride, ask for help, register a child) can be done before they scroll, with reassurance beside it. Variants: a = headline, reassurance and a photo on the left with the form as a raised card on the right; b = a tall photo carrying the headline, with the form and reassurance on a plain panel beside it; c = headline beside a photo, then the form laid out as one horizontal booking bar; an editorial collage: three photographs placed off-grid and overlapping, with a large headline laid across them like a magazine cover, a small caption and a single quiet link. Variants: a = headline on the left breaking into a cascade of photos on the right; b = three photos in a staggered row with the headline running across all of them; c = headline at top left over a large photo, with two smaller photos pinned to its corners
Typography
Prata is a high-contrast Didone, the letterform of the title pages in the school's 1890s library and of the names cut into Indiana limestone lintels. It has one weight, so hierarchy comes from size and space instead of bold. Crimson Pro carries the reading at 19px, and Alegreya Sans SC sets the labels in true small capitals, like catalog cards.
Color
The background is the warm gray of Indiana limestone, which is what the building is made of. The brown is calf leather from the bindings in the reading room, and the blue comes from marbled endpapers. In the dark theme the leather turns to a lamp-lit tan on a near-black that keeps a little warmth, like the reading room after the overhead lights go off.
Layout and navigation
A centred masthead with the name set large, the way a college letterhead does it, and the page links on their own row beneath. It signals institution without fuss. The single button in the bar is 'Sit in on a class', because most applicants decide in a classroom, not on a website.
The hero
An editorial collage: the reading room large, with two smaller photographs pinned to its corners and the school's three-part charge set over them. It leads with books and people reading because that is the actual experience of studying here, and the line tells a working pastor exactly what the school is for.
Calls to action
We avoided 'Apply now' as the first ask. 'Sit in on a class' is low-risk and true to how people choose seminaries; 'Start an application' follows once they are ready. 'See what it costs' appears early and often because cost is the first thing working adults ask, and hiding it costs trust.
Photography
Libraries, desks, open Bibles and faculty portraits, all in warm natural light. Students are shown as the adults they are, not as eighteen-year-olds on a lawn. We used no stock graduation caps.
Accessibility
Body text is 19px with a 1.55 line height and a 64-character measure, and every color pair passes WCAG AA in both themes. The library hours show a written open-or-closed status as well as a coloured dot, and course timetables are real tables with headers for screen readers.
Type system
- DisplayPrataPrata is a Didone with heavy hairline contrast and teardrop terminals, the face of nineteenth-century title pages and the carved names over Indiana limestone doorways.
- TextCrimson ProCrimson Pro is a book face in the Garamond tradition, set a size larger than usual so course descriptions read like the page of a good commentary rather than a brochure.
- AccentAlegreya Sans SCAlegreya Sans SC gives true small capitals for labels, room numbers and course codes, the way a library catalog card sets them.
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 | 13.87:1 | AAA |
| Body text on cards | Aa | 15.44:1 | AAA |
| Secondary text | Aa | 5.58:1 | AA |
| Links | Aa | 7.45:1 | AAA |
| Button text | Aa | 8.9:1 | AAA |
| Accent label text | Aa | 6.01:1 | AA |
| Text on dark bands | Aa | 13.87:1 | AAA |
| Muted text on dark bands | Aa | 7.45:1 | AAA |
| Text on brand bands | Aa | 8.9:1 | AAA |
| Muted text on brand bands | Aa | 5.82:1 | AA |
Dark theme
| Pairing | Sample | Ratio | WCAG |
|---|
| Body text on page | Aa | 15.08:1 | AAA |
| Body text on cards | Aa | 13.9:1 | AAA |
| Secondary text | Aa | 6.7:1 | AA |
| Links | Aa | 8.68:1 | AAA |
| Button text | Aa | 8.85:1 | AAA |
| Accent label text | Aa | 9.22:1 | AAA |
| Text on dark bands | Aa | 15.9:1 | AAA |
| Muted text on dark bands | Aa | 8.0:1 | AAA |
| Text on brand bands | Aa | 8.85:1 | AAA |
| Muted text on brand bands | Aa | 5.41:1 | AA |
