The existing identity had presence
The CCS website was built around a deep burgundy. It was visually distinct in the GOV.UK landscape. Unmistakably government. But presence is not the same as the right signal.
Burgundy communicates authority and heritage. That is exactly the correct register for a formal institution. CCS is primarily a service. Its users need to trust it, not be impressed by it.
Blue as trust signal
The shift to Cornflower Blue (#699AFF) was a deliberate repositioning. Blue is the dominant trust signal in digital products. Users associate it with reliability and safety: the colour of banks, NHS services, government portals. For a platform handling procurement decisions worth billions annually, that association is not incidental. It is the point.
Changing a primary colour is not a colour decision. It is a system decision. The move from burgundy to blue created an opportunity to fix a structural problem. The site had previously used four pillar colours for Building, Corporate Solutions, People, and Technology that operated independently of each other. The result was a site that could look visually incoherent depending on which section you were in.
A semantic palette
The new system replaced ad hoc pillar colours with four semantic roles: Trust (blue), Progress (green), Energy (yellow), and Authority (claret). Each tested against WCAG 2.1 contrast requirements. The shade variants reach AAA for normal text with white, giving flexibility in content-dense areas.
The old primary becomes a supporting character. Professional Claret handles authority content, formal communications, serious topics. The palette now has a logic. Users see a coherent system, not a patchwork of section colours.