Springline supplies water to 340,000 households in Devon. The look is 2007 again: gloss, bubbles, a hyper-blue sky, and the one rule keeps it from being nostalgia: every panel is translucent, so you can always see the layer beneath. A utility that hides what is underneath is the thing people already distrust about utilities.
One glossed sphere with the highlight on the top 42%, the same proportion the panels use. The mark is the only fully opaque object in the system, because it is the one thing that must never be read through.
The mark, and the two reductions it is allowed
Every panel is 30% white with a blur behind it. Switch them on: they overlap, and the text on each stays readable because the recipe was set once against the worst case rather than tuned per screen.
Three panels, each readable over the others
The blue does the brand and nothing else has to. Green and amber exist only to say whether something is fine or is not, which on a water bill is the only question.
#B7E2F6 → #DFF1FBThe ground on every screen. Lighter at the bottom, always.#0B4A6BThe mark, buttons and every heading over 30 px.#3E9B57Supply normal. Nothing else is ever green.#C6741AWorks, restrictions, a missed reading. Never red: red is for a burst main and there is a separate system for that.A humanist sans with soft terminals, because the bill is read by everybody and the tone has to survive being a demand for money. Numbers are set enormous and everything else gets out of their way.
The app, a bill, a van and a card. The bill is the test: gloss and bubbles have to survive being the least welcome envelope of the month.
App · every panel translucent
Card, 85 × 55 mm
Bill, A4 · the figure first, the reason under it
Vehicle · the flat one-colour mark
Every sample we take is published, including the failures.
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People do not choose their water company, so warmth without substance reads as management speak. Everything says what happened, when, and what is being done.
Alphington main, closed until 14 March. Water is on; pressure is lower.
What, until when, and what it means for the person reading.We are working hard to improve your service.
No date, no location, nothing anybody can plan around.Two samples failed in February. Both were re-tested within four hours.
Publishes the failure and the response, which is the only way the good results mean anything.Committed to delivering excellence for our customers.
Could be printed on any bill from any utility in the country.This look is remembered fondly and copied badly. Four ways it goes, and the first is the one that turns a system into a nostalgia exercise.
Springline is invented, built as a portfolio exercise in the Frutiger Aero revival. Exeter, Devon and Alphington are real; this utility, its readings, samples, prices and staff are not, and no figure here should be read as real water-quality data. The visual language is after Windows Vista and the Aero look of about 2007, and the revival of it from about 2023. Those designers are credited as influences only. Part of the One Rule Each series.
Nothing is opaque except the mark and the type. Every panel is 30% white with a gloss on the top 45%, and it must stay readable over any other panel.