A school has to look like the standard it sells.
Hardé teaches African professionals to lead. The work is everything a learner meets before and after they enrol: the mark, the website, the learning product, the room at a graduation, and the film that announces each release.
The mark carries a crown and an open book.
A shield built from four parts: the H of Hardé, a crown because the name comes from Adé, the Yoruba word for royalty, a loop for interactivity and an open book for learning, set in Neue Haas Grotesk. It holds from a favicon to the back of a cap to a graduation banner without losing itself, which is the reason everything after it stays consistent.
#00ABBD
The old site read like a filing cabinet.
Long menus, stock photography, and a homepage you had to hunt through for the point. We rebuilt it around one promise, real people, real growth, real impact, and put the community at the front instead of the prospectus.
Behind the marketing site sits the actual school.
Courses, cohorts, progress, certificates, and an admin side that keeps tens of thousands of accounts moving. The screens Hardé inherited worked and showed their age: dense tables, default styling, no hierarchy. The rebuild goes one module at a time (programmes, applicants, courses, learners, revenue), each one designed, prototyped and handed to engineering on its own, along with a lite version of every page.
Every programme launches as its own brand.
The school sells programmes, and each one needs a full kit before the first learner signs up: a landing page, flyers, ads, a brochure, facilitator bios, and a certificate waiting at the end. The core four are BLEP for business leaders, ELPC for people starting their careers, PMEC for project managers and SEP for senior executives. Shorter runs sit around them, the Sprint webinars, the Clarity Bootcamp and the School of Data.
ELPC is free to learners, with sponsors covering the cost alongside Hardé, so every cohort ends with an impact report that shows the sponsors what they paid for.
It does not stay on the screen.
Hardé graduates people, and a graduation is a room. The brand is built for that room and for the walk home from it: the banner behind the stage, the signage that gets you through the door, and the things a learner keeps wearing long after the certificate is filed.
And the part that leaves with the learner. The shield goes on the front, the address goes on the back, so a cap in a lecture hall does the same job as a billboard would.
Four years, one system.
Design partner to the school since 2022, across every surface a learner meets.
45,000+
Learners in the community the rebuilt site was built to put first
45%
Lift in engagement behind the website refresh
6
Surfaces held end to end: brand, website, learning product, programmes, events, motion