Tell people the truth about divorce. Then help them handle it.
The editorial direction. Divvy's real asset is attorney-written knowledge, and this brand looks like it: a serious serif, black ink on warm paper, and a marigold highlighter that marks what matters. The photography is documentary. Hope comes from respect: nothing is sugarcoated, and nothing is hidden.
The brief
The February 2026 guidelines were built for one reader: a woman, at home, on a couch. The new brand has two customers in every case, and the imagery has to make both of them believe the process is survivable. These are the six requirements and how Plain Truth meets each.
Casting is 50/50 across every campaign, solo subjects outnumber couples, fathers appear as caregivers, and props that code domestic-feminine (throws, mugs, florals) are out. Color choices avoid the red-pink axis where men's and women's preferences split.
Hurlbert & Ling 2007
Two Google Fonts families, Source Serif 4 and Libre Franklin, replace four paid or trial faces. Both are free under the SIL Open Font License, load from one link tag, and work in HubSpot, Figma, Canva, Word and the platform.
Google Fonts
Every photograph carries an exposure target (mean luminance at or above 140 on a 0–255 scale, versus 74–110 on the current blog) and the blog card's half-height navy panel becomes a light panel. Hope is shown as agency plus a visible path, which is what the product sells.
Snyder 1994; Wilms & Oberfeld 2018
No generative AI for people or places. Photography is commissioned or licensed from editorial collections, with a tell-tale checklist for review and a disclosure rule for the rare illustrative AI use.
Clutch 2025
Each color in the palette lists its role, the effect it is meant to have, and the study that supports the claim. The page also says where the research is thin.
Elliot 2015
The references are Upsolve (bankruptcy, daylight family photography, one saturated blue), Atticus (disability benefits, warm outdoor portraits), Farewill (will writing, a yellow identity that asked why death had to be gray) and Empathy (bereavement, calm and non-emotional). Each shows the subject can be serious and the brand still bright.
Design Week 2020
Foundations
Registered tagline
The smart solution to separation.
Retained. It is neutral, it is on the trademark filing and the site, and it still works.
Supporting line for this direction
Divorce, explained. Then handled, by you.
Used under the tagline on the homepage, in the podcast open, and on the first slide of the investor deck.
Personality
Audience
Women initiate about 69% of divorces, which is why the category's brands skew female by default. But every divorce has two parties, and the "Potential" projection in the business plan counts both as buyers. The brand has to feel like it was made for a 44-year-old electrician in Anaheim as much as for a 38-year-old nurse in Pasadena.
Source: Rosenfeld 2015, How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey, 2,262 adults.
Logo
The split D with the forward triangle is the strongest asset the brand has: a letter and a direction in one shape. It is retained unchanged. The wordmark is reset in Libre Franklin at weight 700 so the logo and the interface share one typeface.
Primary wordmark on white or Background. Used most often.
Reversed on Ink. The triangle keeps the accent color.
On the Field color. Ink disc; triangle in white for contrast.
Brand mark alone: favicon, app icon, social avatar, stamp.
Secondary mark "d/" for tight spaces and merchandise. Set in Libre Franklin.
Minimum size: 24px mark height on screen, 8mm in print. Clear space equals the height of the triangle on all sides.
Set the wordmark in the display serif.
Use the 2026 navy and butter yellow. They are retired.
Place the logo over a dark or busy photograph.
Color
The research on color and emotion is uneven, and the best review of it says so. Three findings hold up across cultures and methods: lighter colors are rated more pleasant than darker ones; yellow and orange are tied to joy, black and gray to sadness; and blue is the most preferred hue for both men and women. The palette below is built on those three, and each swatch cites its source.
Elliot 2015 on the state of the evidence; Wilms & Oberfeld 2018; Jonauskaite et al. 2020; Hurlbert & Ling 2007; Palmer & Schloss 2010.
All text, rules, the wordmark
Near-black type on warm paper is the highest-legibility combination there is, and it signals that the words are the point.
Source: Wilms & Oberfeld 2018
RGB 21, 32, 43
Default page background
A warm off-white. White is the color most linked to relief; the warmth keeps it from feeling clinical.
Source: Jonauskaite et al. 2020
RGB 251, 248, 241
Primary accent, used big: highlight blocks, the mark's triangle, pull quotes
Yellow is the color most consistently linked to joy across cultures. Used as a highlighter rather than a wash, it marks what matters and lifts the page without softening it.
Source: Jonauskaite et al. 2020
RGB 255, 183, 3
Secondary tint: tables, sidebars, document mockups
A cool counterweight to the marigold. Light blue keeps the trust signal of the original brand in a supporting role.
Source: Palmer & Schloss 2010
RGB 220, 235, 245
Secondary text, bylines, captions
A cool-biased gray for hierarchy, never for panels.
Source: Jonauskaite et al. 2020
RGB 76, 88, 102
Cards and form fields on Paper
Pure white lifts interactive surfaces off the paper ground.
Source: Jonauskaite et al. 2020
RGB 255, 255, 255
Measured over a typical page or screen. The page should be mostly light. Dark colors are for type, not for panels.
Paper 58% · White 15% · Ink 12% · Marigold 9% · Ice 6%
WCAG 2.2 requires 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text and interface components. Every pair the brand uses for text is listed here with its ratio.
| Foreground | Background | Ratio | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ink text | Background | 15.55:1 | AAA |
| Ink text | Tint | 13.54:1 | AAA |
| Ink text | Field | 9.44:1 | AAA |
| Ink text | Accent | 9.44:1 | AAA |
| Slate text | Background | 6.84:1 | AA |
| Slate text | Tint | 5.96:1 | AA |
| White text | Action button | 16.49:1 | AAA |
| Accent as text | Background | 1.65:1 | Fail |
A low grade on "Accent as text" is expected and is the point of the row: the accent is a graphic color for shapes, highlights and large marks, never a color for running text.
Most color studies test red. Blue and green are less studied, lightness and saturation less still, and many older studies were small and poorly controlled. Treat the claims here as well-supported directions, not laws, and test the palette with real users in the beta UX study already planned.
Elliot 2015: "the field is at an early stage."
Typography
All four current families are retired. Source Serif 4 and Libre Franklin are served by Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License, which means no license fees, no trial watermarks, and the same faces in HubSpot, the platform, Figma, Canva, Word and the investor deck.
Display · Source Serif 4 600
You have 30 days to respond. Here is what to do with them.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 §¶&
Adobe's open-source serif with optical sizes from caption to display. Authoritative without being stuffy, and it sets long explanatory articles beautifully.
Text and interface · Libre Franklin 400–700
The petition (FL-100) starts the case. The summons (FL-110) tells your spouse it has started. Both are filed together, with a $435 fee or a fee waiver (FW-001).
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789
An open-source revival of Franklin Gothic, the newspaper sans. Pairs with Source Serif the way a headline pairs with a deck.
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com"> <link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin> <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Source+Serif+4:opsz,wght@8..60,500;8..60,600;8..60,700&family=Libre+Franklin:wght@400;500;600;700&display=swap">
For Word, Canva or Figma, download the same families from fonts.google.com and install them; the license permits it.
Imagery
The current blog images fail on three counts: they are dark (a measured mean luminance of 74 to 110 out of 255 across the twelve cards, half of which is a navy panel), they are set in courtrooms and law libraries, and at least five of the twelve are recognizably AI-generated. Hope, in the one psychological model that defines it usefully, is agency plus pathways: the belief that you can act, and that you can see a route. Every photograph should show one or both.
Snyder 1994 (hope = agency + pathways). Luminance measured on divvylaw.com/blog, November 3, 2026.
Documentary and available-light. Honest portraits with eye contact, real workplaces and homes, visible texture. Bright but not glossy; never black-and-white. The photograph should feel like a well-shot newspaper feature.
Never: courtrooms, law libraries, gavels, marble columns, dark wood, a desk with a nameplate.
Most people cannot tell AI images from photographs under test (57% were wrong), and about 40% say they would trust a brand less for using them undisclosed. The risk is not that readers will spot the fake; it is that the ones who do will stop trusting the words beside it. Every image gets this check before it is published.
Clutch, September 2025.
One day with a Los Angeles or Orange County editorial photographer, eight to ten subjects recruited through the community list, releases signed. Budget it as a launch cost; it produces a year of blog, social and deck imagery that no competitor has.
Editorial and lifestyle collections that identify photographers and offer model releases. Filter to natural light and candid. Reject anything tagged generative.
Generative tools may produce abstract shapes, textures and diagrams only, and the caption says so. No people, no hands, no interiors, no documents.
The card is the brand's most-seen asset: it runs on the blog, LinkedIn, X, Instagram and Facebook. The navy panel took up half the card and pulled the whole feed toward night. The new panel is Paper panel, Ink text, Marigold highlight on the key phrase. The headline keeps its candor.
The tiles above are briefs, not photographs. Their background shows the target light level.
Graphic device
The highlighter: a marigold block behind key phrases, numbers and deadlines. It replaces the current pattern entirely. It replaces the 2026 tessellation pattern, which read as wallpaper and competed with photography.
Voice
The voice is the same in all five directions at its core, because it comes from the product: attorney-written, plain, and sequenced. What changes is the tone dial. For Plain Truth: Candid and direct. Say the hard thing first, then the way through. Dry humor is allowed; sarcasm is not.
Current homepage
Divorce without the cost of an attorney
Divorce should not cost you everything.
Plain Truth
Divorce, explained. Then handled, by you.
Attorney-built forms and instructions for Los Angeles and Orange County. No retainer, no hourly billing, no surprises.
Current blog card
You have 30 days to respond after you're served. The clock doesn't pause.
Plain Truth
You have 30 days to respond after you're served. Here is what to do in week one.
Current social
The Dangers of Using AI as Your "Lawyer"
Plain Truth
A chatbot invented six court cases. The lawyer who cited them was fined $5,000. Here is how to use AI without that happening to you.
Applications
Four surfaces, built from the tokens on this page. Photographs are shown as light-level briefs.
The smart solution to separation
Attorney-built forms and instructions for Los Angeles and Orange County. No retainer, no hourly billing, no surprises.
Start your divorce See the steps
$349 uncontested · $3,500 contested · Los Angeles and Orange County
Your response is due in 7 days
Hi Marcus, your response (FL-120) to the petition is due Tuesday, December 29. You have completed 4 of 6 items on the response checklist. The two that remain take about 20 minutes.
DivvyLaw is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice.
Uncontested · Los Angeles County
Welcome back, Dana. You are 2 of 7 steps in.
Implementation
:root {
--ink: #15202B; --slate: #4C5866; --field: #FFB703;
--accent: #FFB703; --tint: #DCEBF5; --bg: #FBF8F1; --white: #FFFFFF; --action: #15202B;
--font-display: 'Source Serif 4', Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;
--font-text: 'Libre Franklin', 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif;
}Sources
Site audit: divvylaw.com and divvylaw.com/blog, read November 3, 2026. Comparables viewed the same day: upsolve.org and atticus.com. Current guidelines: Divvy Brand Guidelines, InDesign export dated February 17, 2026.