From the sprint planning call: editors pick from the brand guide's colors only, and the colors left over from the old site come out of the picker. Most of those leftover colors were never editor choices anyway. The old theme applies them itself, to headings, links, buttons, divider lines, and the header and footer. That means we can go further than the picker: as part of the migration, every legacy color can be mapped to a brand color, and the site conforms fully to the current brand guide. Below is that mapping. Most of it is shown for visual confirmation; two items need a decision.
Eleven options: white plus the five primary and five secondary colors from the brand book, using the book's own names.
None of these were picked by editors. The old theme applies them itself: the dark red to section titles and component headings, teal to links, the mid gray to the header and footer, and the lighter grays to divider lines. Removing a legacy color just means the rebuilt theme uses a brand color for the same job. Role by role:
Links are the highest-traffic color decision on the site. The old teal failed contrast badly (2.62 against a 4.5 requirement), which is part of why it's going. Exquisite is the natural brand replacement, but as-is it lands at 4.28, just under the line. The brand guide gives us two ways out: it allows secondary colors to be darkened by 40 percent, or we can use a primary color instead. Rendered on white:
Link candidates, shown on the site's white background
The trade-off to weigh: the darker Exquisite keeps links clearly distinct from the red used on headings and buttons, and stays closest to the cool link color visitors are used to. The brand red is the strongest brand statement, but it risks blurring the line between "this is a link" and "this is a heading." Whichever is chosen, the hover state gets defined alongside it as a darker step of the same color.
The current site uses two kinds of divider lines: a clearly visible gray between major sections, and a faint one inside menus and lists. The straightforward standardization sends both to Delicate, but that effectively deletes the stronger tier. Side by side:
Rick Cardenas, President and CEO. Darden's leadership team guides eleven brands.
To nourish and delight everyone we serve.
Careers, investor relations and press contacts.
Rick Cardenas, President and CEO. Darden's leadership team guides eleven brands.
To nourish and delight everyone we serve.
Careers, investor relations and press contacts.
Rick Cardenas, President and CEO. Darden's leadership team guides eleven brands.
To nourish and delight everyone we serve.
Careers, investor relations and press contacts.
The proposal: give the separator two styles, Subtle (Delicate) and Strong (Smoky), both brand grays, and long pages keep their section structure. Smoky is deliberately darker than the old gray; a divider doesn't need to match the old color, it needs to separate sections, and staying inside the brand palette is the point of this exercise. If Smoky reads too heavy in practice, Nourishing (the warm taupe) is the softer brand-approved fallback.