Meridian Capital
An advisory firm site built on restraint — where credibility comes from clarity rather than stock photography of handshakes.
- Type
- Concept project
- Sector
- Financial services
- Scope
- Design + build
- Year
- 2025
01Overview
What it is.
Meridian is a concept for an independent advisory firm — the kind of business that wins clients in a room, then loses them to a website that looks like every other firm in the sector. The brief we set ourselves was to build trust without a single trust-signal cliché.
- Website Design
- Design System
- Web Development
02Challenge
The problem worth solving
Financial sites converge on the same solutions: aerial cityscapes, stock portraits, and a wall of disclosure text nobody reads. The result is that every firm looks equally credible, which means none of them do.
- 01
Trust has to be constructed from structure and language, not imagery.
- 02
Regulatory disclosure is unavoidable and usually destroys the page's composition.
- 03
The audience skews older, which makes type size, contrast and keyboard access load-bearing rather than optional.
03Strategy
The decisions taken first
We treated the site as a document rather than a brochure — something with the authority of print, where hierarchy does the persuading.
Lead with the position
The homepage opens with what the firm believes about managing money, stated plainly, instead of a generic welcome.
Disclosure as design
Regulatory copy is given a deliberate, legible treatment in the page rhythm rather than being hidden in six-point grey.
People before process
Advisers are introduced early, because in advisory work the relationship is the product.
04Design
How it was composed
A tight editorial system: one serif for argument, one grotesque for interface, generous measure and a deep green ground that reads as considered rather than corporate.
Two-column asymmetry
A persistent narrow column carries labels, indices and disclosure, keeping the main measure clean.
Rules, not boxes
Content is separated with hairlines instead of cards, which keeps long-form pages calm at any density.
Restrained palette
One ground, one ink, one accent used only for actions — so the accent always means the same thing.
05Development
How it was built
Built as a static, server-rendered site: no client-side data fetching on any public page, and JavaScript reserved for navigation and the enquiry form.
Static by default
Every public route pre-rendered, so time to first byte is a CDN lookup.
Type-first loading
Variable fonts subset and preloaded, with metric-matched fallbacks so the headline never reflows.
Accessible by construction
AA contrast throughout, a visible focus system, and a keyboard path through every interaction.
06Gallery
Screens from the concept.
Abstracted compositions rather than screenshots — these are concept builds, and a photorealistic mockup would imply a client site that does not exist.
07Outcome
What it produced.
As a concept, Meridian is where we worked out the editorial system this studio now builds from. It is a demonstration, not a case of client results.
A reusable editorial system
The type scale, hairline rhythm and asymmetric grid developed here now underpin how we approach content-heavy sites.
Compliance without compromise
It proved that disclosure-heavy content can be composed, not merely accommodated.
Weightless delivery
The full site ships under 40KB of JavaScript, which set the performance bar we hold new projects to.
Technology
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Vercel
Your project
Build something like this.
Send us the problem. We will come back with the structure we would use and what it would cost.