Decisions — Denguezli Advisory (lead build)
Denguezli Advisory has not been contacted. Per the website-builder skill's lead-mode rule,
gaps were resolved with a recommended default instead of a blocking question. Every entry
below is an override point the operator should confirm or overturn before this goes from
draft to a real proposal/go-live.
Mode
- Running
draft-first: full draft site with a visible draft ribbon +noindex, so there's
something concrete to show if/when outreach happens. Not indexed, not go-live.
Google Maps / Business Profile
- No Places listing exists (verified by direct Google Maps search, not just a missing API key).
Skipped the Places dossier entirely; built from the existing site only. **Recommendation to
surface in any pitch:** this business is invisible on Google Maps — a Business Profile is a
bigger opportunity than the website itself. See google-maps-listing skill if this becomes a client.
Category
- No bundled category spec matches "boutique management/strategy consulting" exactly.
Used other.md's explicit routing table ("regulated professional advice... consulting" →
lawyer-office.md) as the structural donor, stripped of all legal-specific content.
Full reasoning in build/category-mapping.md.
Languages
- FR (primary, matches the existing site) + EN. The founder is fluent in English (and Arabic/
Spanish, per his bio) and the "Suisse, Europe, Moyen-Orient" positioning implies an
international, not purely Francophone, audience. Arabic/Spanish were considered but not
added — no evidence the *client base* (vs. just the founder) needs them; flagged as a
question for the operator rather than built speculatively.
Hours / "walk-in" framing
- Treated as a by-appointment practice (one principal, no reception/storefront). No hours
block on the homepage; contact copy frames scheduling as "let's arrange a call" rather than
implying drop-in availability.
Contact form
- The existing site uses a Wix-hosted form + reCAPTCHA + newsletter signup. Rebuilt as a
static-friendly contact form per references/contact-forms.md, but **not wired to a live
backend** (no Resend/Web3Forms account exists for a lead) — the form renders and validates
client-side; submission is stubbed with a clear TODO. Newsletter signup dropped (no ESP
account to send to; reintroduce only if the operator wants an email list).
Photography / imagery
- Founder headshot and the four practice-area photos (compass, network nodes, world map,
office chair) are carried over from the existing site pending a licensing check
(see content/cautions.md) — they read as stock/AI-generated rather than owned photography.
Flagged, not blocked: removing them would leave large sections image-less, which reads
worse in a first-draft pitch than a flagged provisional image.
Logo
- No vector source available, only raster crops of a photographed/rendered wordmark. Rebuilt
the "DEN GUE ZLI / ADVISORY" framed wordmark as CSS/SVG type rather than reusing the raster,
so it renders sharp at any size.
v2 redesign — 2026-08-13 (operator rejected v1)
Operator feedback: "the website design is too basic" and "looking too much like the
existing website". Both correct, and one root cause: v1 restyled denguezli.ch rather than
redesigning it — same dark-photo hero → white body → centred serif section title → four
alternating image/text rows in the same order with the same photos → dark contact → footer.
Diagnosis (six named failures): symbolic stock photography carrying the page; no grid
(everything centred in a 1120px box); the gold accent used exactly once; two unstyled <ul>/
<ol> blocks; a timid type scale (3.25rem display vs 17px body) on the web's most common
"elegant" pairing (Playfair + Open Sans); identical section padding throughout.
The insight: the old site reaches for *symbols* of what the firm does. A governance and
audit advisory actually produces documents — reports, assessments, mandates. So the site
should be set like a precisely-composed document. De-photographing it fixes both complaints at
once: typography-led layout is harder to fake and reads more expensive, and it is the single
largest departure from the existing site.
Three directions were mocked up and shown to the operator (portfolio artifact, published
2026-08-13): A "Le dossier" (paper ground, asymmetric grid, no symbolic photos), B "Le portrait"
(split hero built on the founder's portrait), C "Nuit" (fully dark, monumental type).
Operator chose A with B's portrait hero, and removal of all four stock photos. Built:
- Paper ground
#fbfaf8replaces the dark-hero/white-body structure entirely. .gridasymmetric layout: narrow margin column for uppercase labels + offset main column,
applied to every section. This is the design's identity; nothing is centred any more.
- Archivo (neo-grotesque, self-hosted) replaces Playfair + Open Sans throughout; Playfair
survives only in the wordmark, as the link to the existing serif logo.
- Fluid
clamp()type scale — display reaches 5.6rem against 17px body. - The four stock photos (compass, nodes, world map, chair) deleted from
site/src/assets/,
along with PracticeRow.astro. Practice areas are now hairline-separated rows with a gold
index. This also retires the licensing risk flagged in cautions.md for those four files.
- New
StatBandcomponent: 15+ / 05 / 04 / 04, every figure sourced fromidentity.md. - The two unstyled lists rebuilt: "Pourquoi" as a hairline 2×2, "Comment se déroule" as three
numbered columns (numbering earns its place there — it is a real sequence).
- About page gets B's split portrait hero: the founder's photo at 45% of a full band instead of
a 320px thumbnail. It is the firm's one genuine visual asset.
- Uneven vertical rhythm:
.section-hero/.section/.section-tight. - Accessibility:
--color-faintdarkened from#8d8879(3.4:1, failed AA at 12px) to
#6f6a5c (5.2:1); a separate accent-ink token added because the display gold #a8853e is
only 3.3:1 on paper and must never carry small text.
Distinctiveness review — 2026-08-13
- Token discipline: pass —
check-tokens.mjsclean (0 violations after marking structural
breakpoints/icon-glyph pixels tokens-ok; no stray hex, no untracked fonts).
- Visual distinctiveness: pass — swap test holds (near-black + gold + serif + framed square
wordmark + compass/network/map imagery is specific to this business, not a reusable
template); hero is a full-bleed dark photo with left-aligned overlay text, not the
centered-two-CTA AI-builder default; practice areas render as edge-to-edge alternating
image/text rows (no card grid) per styleguide.
check-distinctiveness.mjs flagged two soft warnings against the last 5 registry sites:
primary #161616 within 15–38 RGB units of two other near-black sites, and accent #c6a15b
within 10 RGB units of institut-de-beaute-si-j-etais-moi-a-lutry's #c9a352 gold. Both
tokens were eyedropped directly from this business's own source material (Wix dark theme
computed styles; compass-needle and network-node photography) rather than picked from
vibes, so source fidelity wins over avoiding all resemblance — accepted as-is. Hero layout
(full-bleed photo, left-aligned overlay) differs from the last 5 sites' patterns.
- Source-site fidelity: pass — preserved the dark/gold/serif identity, the framed square
wordmark (rebuilt as CSS, not the raster), and the 4 practice-area photographs; dropped the
newsletter signup and generic Wix chrome (cookie banner, "Plus" nav item) as noted above.
- Reviewer: agent (Claude), lead-mode build — no operator review yet.
Re-run after the v2 redesign — 2026-08-13
- Token discipline: pass —
check-tokens.mjsclean, 20 files, 0 violations. - Visual distinctiveness: pass, and materially stronger than v1. The swap test now holds on
layout alone: the margin-column grid, the credential band and the hairline practice rows
would survive a logo swap and still read as this firm. Hero is type-only-margin-grid —
none of the five compared registry sites use a type-only hero (all five are photo heroes).
check-distinctiveness.mjs repeats the same soft palette warnings as v1 (near-black primary,
gold accent within ~50 RGB units of two other sites); both tokens remain eyedropped from this
business's own source material, so source fidelity still wins over avoiding all resemblance.
- Source-site fidelity: pass — kept the near-black/gold/serif-wordmark identity and the
founder's portrait; deliberately dropped the four symbolic stock photos, the alternating
photo rows, the centred layout and the serif body face, all recorded above.
- Reviewer: agent (Claude), after operator design feedback.
Domain / publish
- No domain registration or custom-domain attach for a lead project. Cloudflare Pages preview
only, under a project-scoped subdomain. denguezli.ch referenced as the business's existing
domain in copy, never treated as ours to touch.