Editorial typography. Restrained accent. Dark warm-cream surface. Brookfield/Apollo grammar — never SaaS.
Live · hilltopmanagementgroup.com
01Essence
PE/RE sponsors don't trust SaaS gradients. They trust print.
Every brand decision is made through one filter: would this look at home in a Brookfield or Apollo investor letter? If yes, ship it. If it reads like an AI startup landing page, kill it.
Editorial
Print, not platform
Cormorant Garamond display + Inter body + 4-stop warm-cream text scale. The page reads like a Bloomberg op-ed, not a product tour.
Restrained
One accent, used sparingly
#b8976a gold is the only color outside the warm grayscale. CTAs, links, focus rings. Never for body text or backgrounds.
Flat
Surface shifts, never shadows
Elevation comes from lightness shifts (#1a→#22→#2a) and hairline borders. Box-shadow is banned. The grain overlay carries the warmth.
"If your sponsor reads this and thinks 'startup,' we've already lost. The work is to read like infrastructure that's been quiet for 30 years."
— editorial direction, redesign 2026-05-01
02Voice + Tone
Plainspoken authority. No claims we can't cite.
Every number has a footnote in `/disclosures/`. Every assertion is sourced. The voice is a senior allocator briefing peers, not a salesperson.
Always do
Cite every number.
"Schwab Institutional reference rate ~4.45%" → footnote linking to source-of-truth in `state/yield-benchmarks.json`. Every quantitative claim must trace.
Show the math.
The calculator at `/calculator/` is the centerpiece — sponsors reach yield-anchored confidence by entering their own numbers, not by trusting ours.
Lead with structure.
RIA-fiduciary partner, Schwab custody, FDIC-insured tier, same-day liquidity. The institutional grammar is the moat.
Never do
Never use SaaS words.
"Platform," "ecosystem," "experience" (as a noun), "delight," "frictionless," "seamless." Banned. They signal "tech founder" — wrong audience grammar.
Never claim performance.
"Up to 4.45%" not "4.45%". "Typically 200–300 bps net pickup" not "you'll save $X." We're an RIA, not a pitch deck.
Never use founder photos as authority.
Dan's bio appears once, in `/about/`, with a single B&W headshot. No "founder & CEO" badges, no LinkedIn-style hero portraits.
A 4-stop surface ladder + a 4-stop warm-cream text scale + one accent. The palette refuses optimism — it's the chromatic equivalent of "we already have the answer."
Surface — black-to-graphite ladder
Background
#0a0a0a
Page. Always.
Surface
#1a1a1a
Card 1, sticky header
Surface 2
#222222
Card 2, modal
Surface 3
#2a2a2a
Hovered card, popover
Line
#2e2e2e
Hairline rule
Line strong
#3a3a3a
Card border, focus
Text — warm-cream 4-stop scale
Text
#f5f0eb
Display + body. Warm cream, not pure white.
Text soft
#c8c2b8
Lede, subtitle
Text muted
#8a8680
Caption, label
Text faint
#5a554f
Footer, micro
Accent — the single gold
Gold
#b8976a
CTA, link, focus ring. Sparingly.
Gold bright
#c5a47e
Hover, active state
Gold deep
#8d7251
Border, edge
Status — used in the calculator + diagnostics only
Teal
#3abfb0
Positive yield delta
Red
#c45b4a
Drag, warning, error
Anti-palette. Pure white. Royal blue. Kelly green. Stripe-style purple gradient. Drop shadow on anything. Backdrop blur on anything. Rounded corners > 8px. Emoji in body copy. The grain overlay is intentional — preserve it.
04Typography
Cormorant for soul. Inter for clarity. Plex Mono for numbers.
Three typefaces, each doing one job. No fourth ever. Italics on Cormorant carry emotional weight; numerals are always Plex Mono so columns line up like an annual report.
HMG operates as the treasury layer between sponsors and Schwab Institutional, supervised by an SEC-registered RIA. The architecture is built for sponsors who want institutional-grade cash management without taking on a custody relationship.
Inter · 400 · 16 · 1.6 line · text-soft
Small
All performance figures sourced from Charles Schwab Institutional reference rates as of the date stated. Past results do not predict future outcomes.
IBM Plex Mono · 300 · 48 · numerals always Plex — never Cormorant
Italics rule. Cormorant italic carries emotional weight — use it for one or two words per phrase, the words that matter most. quietly, your fund, institutional-grade. Never italicize whole sentences. Never italicize numbers (Plex Mono regular only).
05Spacing
Strict 4px grid. Every dimension is a token.
No magic numbers. Every margin, padding, gap traces back to `--s-1` through `--s-10` in `src/styles/global.css`.
--s-1 · 4px
Hairline gaps inside dense rows
--s-2 · 8px
Field label → input
--s-3 · 12px
Card inner gutter
--s-4 · 16px
Group spacing
--s-5 · 24px
Between sibling cards
--s-6 · 32px
Section inner
--s-7 · 48px
Between distinct sections on a screen
--s-8 · 64px
Section + section
--s-9 · 96px
Between major sections
06Components, in context
Real surfaces, in production grammar.
Cards from the live site. Buttons from the calculator. Form fields from the contact page. Every component is rendered in the same shape it ships in.
Stat block
Calculator output
Schwab Institutional4.45%
Operating bank sweep0.39%
Gross delta+406 bps
On $25M idle$1,015,000/yr
Hero card
Page hero
A treasury thought on $25M idle.
For PE/RE sponsors with capital sitting between deployments, the cost of operating-bank sweep at 0.39% is real money. We position that capital across Schwab Institutional treasury products at ~4.45% — same-day liquidity, FDIC-insured tier, in your fund's name.
Buttons
Action surfaces
Primary gold for canonical action; ghost for secondary; link for tertiary; disabled muted. Never two primary in the same view.
Form fields
Contact intake
No marketing automation. Email goes to Dan directly.
One CTA per fold. Two primaries in the same view = no primary. Restraint is the credibility signal — the home page has exactly one "Book 30-min" CTA above the fold and one in the closing block. Never red. Use teal for positive deltas, gold for actions.
07Imagery
Architecture, not people.
HMG's imagery is institutional infrastructure: the buildings, the documents, the typography itself. Photos of Dan or partners appear once, in `/about/`, B&W, single image.
↗ Always
Architecture details — capital columns, marble lobbies, brass elevator buttons. Crop tight.
Smiling teams looking at laptops. Corporate diversity stock kit.
Anything that could appear on a Wix template homepage.
08Mark
A wordmark, not a logo.
"Hilltop" set in Cormorant Garamond at the firm's display weight, gold on dark. The favicon is a single uppercase H in the same family. No icon. No tagline. No registered mark.
Hilltop
Wordmark · on dark
Cormorant 600 · 64px · gold #b8976a
Hilltop
Wordmark · on cream
Cormorant 600 · 64px · ink #0a0a0a
H
Mark · favicon
Cormorant 600 · uppercase H · gold
HilltopManagement Group
Lockup · with subscript
For sign-offs, footers, formal docs only
Mark do-nots. Don't add an icon next to the wordmark. Don't recolor outside palette. Don't outline. Don't drop-shadow. Don't use the wordmark over photography (use the H mark only). Don't add "Treasury Management for PE/RE Sponsors" as a tagline — the page itself is the tagline.
09Voice, in motion
What "right" actually sounds like.
Real-shape outputs in production voice. Use these as templates before drafting anything new for HMG.
Cold email subject + opener
A treasury thought on Ridgemont's idle LP cashSaw your Form D filing close last week. The next 60 days are typically the highest-drag window before deployment pace picks up.
Specific filing reference · time-bounded urgency · italic on the conditional · zero hype
Dashboard alert / Telegram
🟢 7/7 sent at 10 AM. Mix of follow-ups + first-touches. Subject lines clean, no broken fallbacks. 11 AM canary will confirm send rate.
Mobile-first format · status emoji prefix · italic on the system surface · ends with what's next, not what was done
Pitch deck closing slide
Capital is quietly the highest-leverage operations decision a sponsor makes between fund closes. We make sure that decision is the institutional one.
No "thank you" slide · no "Q&A" slide · ends on a positioning sentence · italic carries the philosophy
LinkedIn post
Most mid-market PE sponsors leave $1–3M/yr on the table in operating-bank sweep. Not because they're not paying attention — because the fix looks more disruptive than it is.
Specific dollar range · empathetic frame · ends understated · italic on the operative word
The bar. Read every draft as a sponsor would: skeptical, time-pressed, fluent in finance. If the draft would feel out of place in a Bloomberg op-ed or Apollo investor letter, rewrite it.