East Anglian Air Ambulance is a 24/7 service across four counties. Another agency had delivered a new identity and it had to go live sitewide for a national campaign. No research phase and no time for one.

A brand book covers colours, type and a few hero compositions. It said nothing about the yellow behind 14px body text, a disabled button, or a form error. Those states exist either way, and if the guideline is silent, whoever builds the page decides, twenty times over, differently each time.

So I audited the palette at the sizes things actually render. The brand yellow scores 1.56:1 on white. It fails every threshold at every size.

That mattered here more than most places. The navigation carries a text-resize control, so the charity had already decided who its readers are. Donation, lottery and shop all had to keep working at increased text sizes.

Yellow went to display sizes only, with a darkened amber underneath it, documented at component level so their team could keep applying it after handover.

The brand agency read the amber as breaking their palette. What settled it was showing them the states nobody had drawn.

Shipped on schedule. No metrics and no client quote.