Define
Hope Academy is a school for kids with Dyslexia located in Concord, CA. They hired us to help communicate what they do to prospective parents through their website. We also did some basic brand strategy and positioning for them as they felt a little lost on how to connect with their audience in a meaningful way.
There were a couple of challenges within this project. One was learning all there was about Dyslexia. We always try to learn as much as possible about the industry we are working within. However, learning about Dyslexia provided challenges in finding factual and helpful information. We even contemplated using a ‘Dyslexia’ typeface until we realized they are useless and don’t have much data backing their effectiveness. Another challenge was articulating Hope Academy’s goals and offerings, which needed to also cater to Dyslexic parents.
Industry: Specialized Education
Design
We started the project by doing a Define™ discovery session and learning about Hope Academy’s goals, offerings, and approach. The Define™ helped us make strategic branding decisions on positioning and visually communicating Hope Academy on their website. Part of our discovery sessions led to helping shorten their URL, developing a plan to offer a resource center to help educate parents, and general cleaning up of content to make it more concise and impactful.
Our design approach was to have a modern, gridded feel that would help create definable information sections. In addition, we wanted to make sure to break up the content into blocks to help potential parents with Dyslexia not get overwhelmed while learning about Hope Academy. We also chose typefaces that were not too heavy on character and were incredibly legible.
Another design decision we made was to go on the warmer end of the color palette and utilize textures to positively connect on a human level with Hope Academy’s audience. Finally, we used Invision to prototype a website design to ensure we hit the mark in a real-world application.
Deliver
We developed a fully responsive website design, improved the color palette, and created a visual language with iconography, textures, and image use, along with a strategy to help Hope Academy be the best and most positive force online. So far, they are at full enrollment through the next couple of years. That is so encouraging to see rapid growth!
Tools + Fun Bits
We built this site in Webflow. Typefaces used were Gibson typeface by Canada Type, and Covik Mono from Oh No Typeface. In addition, we integrated Google Calendar along with RenWeb for student enrollment.