The digital home for essays on leadership, trust & influence.
How the Curtez Riggs personal site looks, sounds, and behaves. Share this with anyone building on the brand.
Writer first. Everything else supports the story.
Curtez Riggs is a writer and leader — also a founder, veteran, and community builder, in that order. The site is an author platform, not a conference site, speaker site, or book funnel. MIC appears as proof of the ideas, never as the centerpiece. The primary goal of every page is growing the newsletter.
The signature script.
Sizes. 60px tall in navigation, 48px in footers, up to ~90px in headers. Never below 40px — the script loses legibility.
Clear space. Keep at least half the mark's height clear on all sides. Don't place over busy photo areas without a scrim.
Don't. Recolor, stretch, outline, or add shadows. If a mark is unavailable, set the name in Newsreader 600 as fallback.
Official headshots.
Approved press photography for media, event programs, and podcast pages. Use as delivered — no filters, recolors, or heavy crops that cut the frame.
Navy, gold, and paper.
Drawn from the MIC 2026 palette. No bright colors, no saturated blues beyond Deep Blue, no gradients as decoration. Sections alternate Soft White → Warm Sand → Midnight Navy ink blocks for rhythm.
Typography carries the design.
HEADLINES, PULL QUOTES, ESSAY BODY
ITALIC FOR EMPHASIS & QUOTES
UI COPY, DEKS, BUTTONS, NAV
EYEBROWS, DATES, TAGS, CAPTIONS
Scale. Hero 58–92px · section titles 44–64px · card titles 26–34px · body 17–21px · essay body 20–22px · mono labels 12–14px.
Signature contrast. Huge serif headlines against small tracked mono labels. Every eyebrow starts with a 28px gold dash.
Voice. Calm, reflective, confident, humble. Sentence case. No motivational clichés, no buzzwords, no emoji.
Buttons, links & lists.
Gold = the newsletter (the one primary action). Navy = secondary actions. Outline = tertiary. Hover brightens (gold → #D4B26F, navy → Deep Blue). One gold button per screen.
Arrow links never wrap (white-space:nowrap). Gold-underlined links for featured actions; hairline-underlined navy for quiet ones. Links shift to Ink Gold on hover. Never link to content that doesn't exist yet.
Hairline-divided rows: serif title, gray dek, mono metadata right-aligned. Used for essays, talks, and belief lists.
Authentic, documentary style: stages, conversations, community, writing. Natural color, editorial crops, 8px radius, soft navy shadows. Navy gradient scrim only when text sits on top. No stock photography, no fake boardrooms.