Indigo Newsletter: a president who writes to the people he answers to

The home page opens with a banner that reads Letters from Hiroshi Nakamura, set in the display serif below his designation and Japan in small type, with his one-sentence headline underneath: that a chemical company's capital belongs in plants earning more than they cost. His portrait sits to the right inside a circle, separated from a thin violet ring by a band of the lavender page colour, so the photograph reads like a seal pressed on stationery. A heavy plum rule closes the banner, and on a phone the circle shrinks but stays beside his name.

Beneath the banner the desk divides in two. The wide right-hand column holds the current issue, with an eyebrow reading This letter, then its topic, date and reading time, and his newest title set very large: The answer to a low price-to-book ratio is in the plant register. As the page's main headline, it puts his central claim before any reader. The standfirst, arguing that buybacks cannot answer the exchange's 2023 request, and the opening paragraph follow at about sixty characters a line, signed with his name in italic.

The narrow left-hand column, headed The letter archive, numbers his three letters with their dates: cost of capital in August 2026, why inspection data is falsified in May, and why a retiring president should leave the board in January. Together they show a habit of writing about what Japanese manufacturers postpone. On a phone the order reverses, putting the current letter first and the archive in two short columns beneath it.

A tinted panel headed Continue the correspondence then carries his philosophy, that a specification and a balance sheet are both promises, with a link to his contact page. His headline figures follow, including return on equity of 8.6 per cent and cross-held stakes cut from 41 to 8, then his proof points and an endorsement from the chair of his nomination committee.

Indigo sets deep plum text on a pale lavender ground, with raised panels in a lighter lilac and a saturated violet reserved for eyebrows, links and the portrait ring. The palette is closer to fine writing paper than to the blues and greens of chemical-company branding, so the site reads as personal. The composition loads Libre Baskerville for headlines and letter text and DM Sans for dates, labels and navigation. Baskerville gives a long argument about cost of capital the steadiness of a printed annual letter; DM Sans keeps yen figures legible at small sizes. For outside directors and institutional investors, the effect is serious and unhurried.

The career page, headed Letters from my career, gives each of his six postings its own bordered sheet with a lilac dateline band carrying a record number and the dates, from the Toyama electrolysis cells to the president's office, so a search partner sees the scale of every role inside one company. The Board Readiness page, headed A board appointment correspondence, reads his contribution, first-year approach and three judgement examples as one continuous letter, then sets his committee preferences, eighteen available days, board exposure and governance learning in two enclosure columns. Both pages print cleanly, and each essay page adds a pull quote and links to the neighbouring letters.

The Newsletter composition rewards leaders whose authority rests on explaining decisions over time: a president who writes an annual letter to shareholders, a finance chief guiding investors through a portfolio change, or a family-company chair preparing a handover. It suits less well a leader whose evidence is mainly visual. Every designation can use it, and the lavender is light enough for conservative sectors.