Indigo Field Notes: a grid engineer's website that opens on his latest argument

A narrow strip runs across the top of the home page, with Field notes / Oliver Campbell set in the display face on the left and his title and country in small violet capitals on the right. Below it the page splits in two. The wide column carries the most recent essay as a dispatch: an eyebrow reading Dispatch 01 / Canada, then the topic, the date and the reading time, then the title at headline size. For Oliver that title is Buy the second smart meter for the feeder, not for the bill. The standfirst and a link reading Read this dispatch follow.

For a utility technologist that order matters. A search partner meets a position on a live capital question, a C$112 million meter programme, before meeting a job title, so the essay's title has to work as a claim on its own.

To the right of the dispatch, behind a fine vertical rule, the portrait sits at a modest height with a caption beneath it in the manner of a field photograph: his name, Canada, English and working French, his availability and a contact link. On a phone the columns stack and the portrait shrinks to a thumbnail beside its caption, so the essay title stays first.

The composition can add a scrollable rail of short career entries beneath the dispatch. Oliver's demonstration keeps his career on its own page and moves straight to further reading.

Dispatches 02 and 03 follow as a numbered reading list with their summaries: one argues that a distributor's control room should rehearse running the grid without the corporate network, the other that carbon capture belongs in a board paper only when priced per tonne avoided. A quoted conviction comes next, about trusting technology only when someone owns its settings, and then three figures: 287,000 customers, the C$112 million meter programme and a seventy-two-hour isolation drill.

Below sit his thesis, a three-paragraph introduction and four proof points between two horizontal rules, each with its cost left in, then his current focus and the conversations he welcomes.

The Career page, Field notes from an executive career, gives every role a shaded panel on the left with its dates and geography: northern Ontario, the Toronto area with projects in Quebec, southern Ontario, a north-eastern Alberta site with a Calgary head office, and two periods in central and eastern Ontario. The right side carries reporting lines, budgets, outcomes and reasons for moving, from a nine-feeder hydro commission to 6,400 circuit kilometres.

The Board Readiness page, The boardroom territory I know, opens with his contribution between two rules. A shaded register lists the committees he would join or chair, twenty-five days, two directorships, his databank position and governance learning. The wider column holds three judgement examples, including a failed drill reported to an audit and risk committee, his first-year approach and an exposure list that separates directorships from committee reporting.

The palette sets deep aubergine text on a pale lavender ground, with raised panels a shade darker, fine rules in dusty mauve and a saturated violet accent for datelines, labels and links. Utility websites lean on corporate blue and safety orange. Indigo stays cool and institutional without imitating either, which suits municipal shareholders, audit committee chairs and regulators who expect seriousness rather than promotion.

Headlines use Instrument Serif, a narrow, high-contrast face that holds a twelve-word essay title at display size. Text, figures and datelines use Sora, a geometric sans-serif that stays clear at ten pixels and sets C$ figures and gigajoules evenly.

The design works for leaders whose authority comes from places and events they can name: network and plant executives, operational-security leaders, engineering heads at water, rail or port operators, and decarbonisation specialists who have run pilots rather than only modelled them. It needs a strong first essay, because that essay is the headline; without one, the page falls back to the headline and the biography's opening.