Hero options for Direction B, v2

Eleven treatments of the band-grad hero section in home-B-v2.html, all built from the same copy, the same header and the same Direction B language: bands as the sectioning device, bounded cards with a hard 1px border and no shadow, since the offset shadow belongs to Direction A.

Nine of the eleven carry no image file at all. The client's instruction of 2026-08-27 removes team photographs from the home page and rules out stock photographs of people, including placeholders, and asks for "a more elevated, simplified look and feel". Where a hero would normally reach for a picture, these reach for the brand's own devices instead: the gradient, the type, a hairline rule, and the client's tagline used as content. Only two load a file: option 5 uses the client's own swirl mark, and option 10 uses the real client logos already in the project. Neither is a photograph.

Colours are the Brand Kit's: NIGHT #003B53, BUSINESS #027CA1, FREEDOM #93BCCD, CONFIDENCE #FFD457, DAY #D98D00, LAW #FFFAEB. Gold stays the only accent in every option. The header is drawn closed and its mega panels are omitted here, so what you are comparing is the hero and nothing else.

Copy is AISV's, unchanged. The three promises in option 3 are the client's own tagline, split into its parts.

1The cardNo imageThe current v1 hero, included unchanged as the control. The page opens on the object it is built from, so the bounded card is established before it is used ten more times below. Its weakness is that a white card on a pale gradient is a low-contrast opening: the card edge is the loudest thing on the screen.
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2Open type, no cardNo imageThe card is removed and the headline sits straight on the brand gradient at 58px. This is the most literal reading of "elevated, simplified": one fewer object on the screen, and the gradient is allowed to be the background rather than something a white box is placed on top of. The card device still arrives in section 2, one scroll later.
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3Split card: the three promisesNo imageThe right half of the hero is filled with content rather than a picture. The column is the client's own tagline broken into its three parts, each with one line drawn from copy already on the page. It answers the question a hero image is usually there to answer, "what do I actually get", and it stays true when the firm's photographs change. The cream ground on the right is LAW, so the split reads as two materials, not two boxes.
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4NIGHT ground, reversedNo imageThe hero moves onto NIGHT with a BUSINESS lift behind the headline, and gold becomes the loudest thing on the screen instead of a card edge. It is the most confident of the six and the one that reads least like a template. Two things to weigh: the white header sits hard against it, which is a decision rather than an accident, and the page then owes a lighter section immediately below, which it has.
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5The swirl as groundOne image: the client's swirlThe only option that loads a file, and it is the client's own swirl mark from the Brand Kit, at 16% opacity and cropped off the right edge. The brand guide's stated concept for the swirl is day and night becoming one, and the design direction already names the gradient and the swirl as the default device when a section needs visual relief. It is the brand's file, never a redraw, which is the rule that ended the earlier hero experiment.
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6Editorial, on creamNo imageThe headline runs the full container width, a single hairline closes it, and the three things a hero has to carry are set out beneath as three tracks: what it means, what to do, what you get. The structure is rules rather than boxes, which is Direction B's stated language taken one step further. Cream is LAW, a brand colour, and it warms an opening that is otherwise all blue.
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7The card on NIGHTNo imageA combination the set did not yet have: the maximum-contrast ground of option 4 with the bounded card of option 1. The card stops being a faint outline on a pale field and becomes a lit surface, which is the one arrangement where B’s card device is genuinely the loudest object in the hero rather than the quietest. Gold sits on white inside the card, so the accent keeps its full value.
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8Headline column, everything else columnNo imageThe copy itself is split rather than the box: the headline holds the left column on its own at 54px, and the right column carries the reason, the two routes and the supporting line, separated by a single vertical hairline. It reads as a statement and its footnote, which is closer to how a law firm actually speaks, and the hairline is structure without adding another bounded object.
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9CentredNo imageThe only option on a different axis. Everything else in the set is left-aligned, which is B’s structural habit; centring trades that structure for air, and air is the cheapest way to read as elevated. Worth seeing precisely because it argues against Direction B’s own language, so it settles the question rather than leaving it open. The measure is held at 900px so the headline still breaks in three lines, not five.
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10Hero plus the proof stripEight client logosThe hero carries its own proof: copy, one hairline, then eight of the firm’s real clients inside the same band, so the first screen answers “who already trusts them” before the visitor scrolls. The logos are the real files already in the project, greyscaled to 72% so they support the headline instead of competing with it. This is the strongest of the set on conversion grounds and the one that most reduces the pressure on a hero image, because the space a picture would occupy is doing work.
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11The assessment as the doorNo imageThe right half is the assessment itself, opened. The seven questions are the ones already on the page in section 2, moved up so the visitor meets a question they recognise in the first screen rather than a claim. It makes the transitional call to action the visible one, which is what the marketing plan asks the site to do, and it fills the slot a photograph would take with something no photograph could say. The trade is that section 2 then has to be rewritten, since its module would be a repeat.
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Not drawn here, on purpose. No option reintroduces a photograph of a person, a team photograph, or a stock placeholder person, because the client ruled all three out and the ruling names placeholders explicitly. The 2026 Brand Photo Shoot cannot fill this slot either: all of its frames are people photographs of the team.

If a picture is wanted here later, the open question for the client is whether they can supply non-people workplace or office photography of their own. That is a client input, not something to solve in the mockup.