One operating system for organizational performance — and one brand to carry it. Black and white at the core, a single thread of colour per product, and a voice that's precise, candid and confident. This is the reference for everything we make.
October is the operating system for organizational performance. The brand has to feel like infrastructure you trust — calm, exact and unmistakably ours.
Every element earns its place. We design like an instrument panel — clear hierarchy, real data, nothing ornamental. If it doesn't help someone see, understand or act, it goes.
Black, white and a precise greyscale carry the work. Colour is rationed — one accent per product, used as a single thread, never a wash. Restraint is the brand.
Big display type, mono meta-labels, generous space. We read like a serious publication, not a SaaS template — because the subject is serious and the proof is real.
Health, People and Advisory are one company with one design language. The accent changes; the grid, the type and the voice do not.
The October wordmark is the primary identity. The standalone mark is for tight spaces only — favicons, avatars, app icons.
Keep clear space equal to the height of the O on all sides. Nothing — type, image edges or other logos — enters that margin.
Wordmark no smaller than 24px tall on screen. Below that, switch to the standalone mark.
The base is a neutral greyscale, theme-aware — ink on paper, or paper on ink. Product accents appear as a single thread, never a fill. Values are hex; click any swatch to copy.
Tokens invert between light and dark themes — the hex shown is the light-theme value. The contrast relationship is the constant, not the absolute colour.
The neutral ramp drives every surface, hairline and chart. Each product ramp is anchored on its brand hex at the 500 step — use 600–700 for hover/pressed, 50–200 for subtle wash backgrounds, 800–950 for text on light. The live UI only needs the 500; the ramp exists for charts, states and one-off accents.
--color-brand-health · .brand-health
Performance psychology — warmth, energy, care.
--color-brand-people · .brand-people
The AI-first HR workspace — clarity, system, trust.
--color-brand-advisory · .brand-advisory
Embedded experts — decisiveness, the moves that matter.
Set .brand-health, .brand-people or .brand-advisory on a page wrapper and the accent cascades into the shared sections via --brand. Off a product page, --brand resolves to the foreground — the base stays monochrome.
Low-chroma pass / warn / fail, scoped to AI transparency reports and status. Each pairs a solid with a -subtle background and a -foreground text colour. Never use them as decoration.
Semantic roles, not font names. Swapping a typeface should only ever touch globals.css and the loader — never a component.
Organizational performance
Space Grotesk
Headings, hero and display copy. Auto-applied to h1–h6. Tight tracking, tight leading. No italic cut — <em> stays upright.
Support people actually use, and signal leaders can act on.
DM Sans
Body and paragraph copy. Applied globally on <html> — never re-apply on children. Relaxed leading for long-form reading.
01 — THE OPERATING SYSTEM
JetBrains Mono
Data, meta-labels, kbd chips, fig numbers, dates and attribution. Always paired with uppercase + wide tracking for labels.
The signature device: a mono, uppercase, wide-tracked label with a pulsing live dot on the left and a right-aligned descriptor, sitting on a hairline rule. It opens almost every section. .text-meta · .text-meta-xs · .text-meta-2xs.
The grid, spacing and motion are as much the brand as the logo. Calm, consistent, and the same on every page.
Centred, 1.5rem fluid padding, capped at 1280px so long lines stay readable. One shared width across the whole site.
py-16 → 24 → 32 for sections; heavier top weight for heroes. Vertical space scales up with the breakpoint, never down.
Title→description tight, content→action medium, title→content large. Use mt-* on children when siblings need different gaps.
Cards are a single-pixel border grid: a bg-border wrapper with gap-px and bg-background cells. One rule system, no double borders.
A geometric scale from sm (0.6×) to 4xl (2.6×). Cards sit at lg–2xl; chips and dots round fully.
A small pulsing foreground (or --brand) dot signals 'live' on meta lines and status. The brand's heartbeat.
cubic-bezier(0.16, 1, 0.3, 1)
A soft, fast-out-slow-in curve on nearly every transition. Paired with a short fade-up (opacity 0→1, y 24→0) that staggers children by ~0.06–0.08s as they enter the viewport once.
Motion reveals; it never performs. Entrances fire once, reduced-motion is fully honoured (pulses, marquees and shimmers all stop), and nothing loops in a way that competes with reading. If an animation draws attention to itself, it's wrong.
We translate data into decisions. The writing does the same — it makes the complex legible, and it never wastes the reader's time.
We name things exactly. Specific numbers, real mechanisms, no hand-waving. The reader should always know what we mean.
We say the hard thing plainly — including what we are not. Radical candor on the page, the same as in the room.
We make claims and stand behind them. Declarative sentences, active voice. We've earned the certainty with proof.
We're supporting people at their most vulnerable. Warm, never clinical or corporate. Plain words over jargon, always.
October is the parent brand and the intelligence layer. Health, People and Advisory are how it shows up — always named in full on first use.
The operating system for organizational performance.
We translate data into decisions, decisions into action, and action into measurable change. The brand said wellbeing; the company became the intelligence layer for the whole people stack.
Performance psychology the whole organisation actually uses.
A workplace mental-health and performance-psychology platform — daily live group sessions, on-demand content and constant-contact check-ins (Pulse), plus the behavioural signal leaders can act on. Support employees actually use, reaching 10× the utilisation of a typical EAP.
An AI-first HR workspace, from the first interview to the final goodbye.
Hiring, payroll, performance, learning, compliance and the 30+ modules in between — running as one system on unified people data. Strategic, AI-first HR that replaces the stack of disconnected tools.
Embedded experts who turn the signal into change.
The execution layer — psychologists, strategists and data scientists who turn your platform's signal into the few moves that matter, drive leadership action, and stay accountable for measurable performance change. The rigour of a strategy firm, run continuously inside the platform.
Health owns engagement and eNPS; People owns reviews, surveys and the workplace record and points to Health for wellbeing. Keep the ownership lines clean — don't have two products claim the same job.
October is the operating system for organizational performance.
October connects the full people stack — HCM, wellbeing, surveys, performance psychology and experts — into one intelligence layer. See what's happening, understand what matters, and act where it counts.
October is the operating system for organizational performance. We connect the full people stack — HCM, wellbeing, surveys, performance psychology and experts — into one intelligence layer. That lets companies see what's happening, understand what matters, and act where it will make the biggest difference. We translate data into decisions, decisions into action, and action into measurable change.