Redesign of the website for STAX — The Stanford Initiative for Business, Taxation, and Society, a cross-disciplinary tax research group at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (Economics · Finance · Accounting).
Current site: https://stax.stanford.edu
This repo currently holds three design directions to choose from. Each is a complete, clickable, five-page prototype built with the real STAX content. Once a direction is picked, we build it out as the production site (Next.js on Vercel).
explorations/
index.html → comparison landing page — start here
editorial/ → Direction 01 · "The Ledger" (editorial / scholarly-journal)
swiss/ → Direction 02 · "The Grid" (Swiss / institutional-modern)
warm/ → Direction 03 · "Quarter" (warm humanist, RegLab-elevated)
content/
stax-content.json → single source of truth for all site content
docs/
research-notes.md → what we learned from STAX, GCAP, and RegLab
To view: open explorations/index.html in a browser and click into each direction. Everything runs from disk — no build step, no server.
- Simple and minimal, like the two reference sites: GCAP (globalcapitalallocation.com) and Stanford RegLab (reglab.stanford.edu).
- A clean About page with headshots + positions (RegLab-style).
- A Research page like GCAP's — the current STAX site has "fonts way too big for the abstracts and everything looks way too busy." Fixed here: abstracts are set small, calm, and airy.
- Pages: Home, Research, About, Events, Careers (at least).
- A Careers page listing open jobs linked to Stanford application portals — not populated yet, but ready to be.
- Some basic scrolling animations.
- Must not look like a generic AI site ("no pills and shit") — so: no decorative pill/badge chips, no purple gradients, no glassmorphism, no Inter/Roboto, no emoji. Each direction commits to a real, distinctive aesthetic.
| # | Name | Aesthetic | Type | Palette |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | The Ledger | Editorial / scholarly journal | Fraunces + Newsreader + IBM Plex Mono | Warm paper, ink, cardinal |
| 02 | The Grid | Swiss / institutional-modern | Archivo + Space Mono | White, near-black, cardinal |
| 03 | Quarter | Warm humanist (RegLab, elevated) | Bricolage Grotesque + Spectral | Bone, warm ink, cardinal |
All three use Stanford Cardinal (#8C1515) as the single accent, GCAP-style small-abstract research listings, and a RegLab-style people grid.
- People, mission text, events, and news are pulled from the live STAX site and are accurate as of the research date.
- The research paper list is representative — drawn from public STAX topics and Stanford Report coverage. Titles/authors/abstracts should be confirmed by STAX before launch.
- Headshots are monogram placeholders (initials) — real photos drop in later. We do not use fake face photos.
- Careers listings are examples showing the layout; positions are not yet posted. "Apply" links point to https://careersearch.stanford.edu/ and get swapped for specific job-requisition URLs.
Pick a direction. Then the production build:
- Next.js (App Router) + TypeScript + Tailwind, deployed on Vercel.
- Real routes for each page, content driven by
content/stax-content.json(easy for STAX to edit). - Scroll animations via CSS + a small motion layer, respecting
prefers-reduced-motion. - Slots for real headshots and live job-requisition links.