NO. 8412 · On air

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Cultivate Education Consultancy

A whole professional presence for a one-person education consultancy, from the sapling mark right through to the invoice template.

Specification

Client
Cultivate Education Consultancy
Year
2025
Role
Brand, Design, Build, Print
Disciplines
Brand identity, Web design, Stationery, Print production
Visit the live sitecultivate.wales

What they arrived with

Nothing at all, which is rather the story. An education consultant was setting up alone, with deep experience of schools and every part of the business still to make: the mark, the letterhead, the invoice and the site. The first meeting with a headteacher was already in the diary, and everything that meeting would touch had to exist before it happened.

The real constraint

One person, a standing start and a modest budget, selling into a sector that still runs on paper. Everything designed had to look as good from the trusty mono laser in a school office as it does on a phone. And the budget meant designing it once, and designing it properly.

The thinking

  1. This was never really a website job. A consultancy walking into a school needs to look like a proper business at every touchpoint: the mark, the letterhead, the proposal, the invoice and the site. Treating it as one identity system rather than a web project is what made a modest budget go the distance.
  2. A palette at home in a school, without dressing up as one. Cream, forest green and terracotta, with a sapling for a mark: warm, reassuringly institutional, and drawn for this consultancy alone.
  3. Build one page, structured for five. The site is a single page, but each section is built to lift cleanly into a page of its own when the business grows into it. Phase two is a matter of giving those sections their own pages, not a rebuild.

The build

First the mark, then a full stationery and invoice suite, ready for print with real margins and real paper sizes. Then a single-page site sharing its palette and type with the paperwork. One system, at every touchpoint.

Contact sheet

  1. Cultivate's services section, headed Four ways I work with schools, with photographs of a classroom and a curriculum map.
    1 · ServicesFour ways of working with schools, each of them starting with a conversation.
  2. Cultivate's approach section, headed An approach built in Welsh classrooms, beside a quote about a wet Tuesday in the staffroom.
    2 · ApproachAn approach built in Welsh classrooms, in the consultant's own words.
  3. Cultivate's contact section on forest green, headed Tell me about your school, with a short enquiry form and the email address.
    3 · ContactThe enquiry form, set on the forest green of the palette.
  4. The foot of Cultivate's page: the sapling mark over the Cultivate wordmark, Education Consultancy and the line Nurturing growth through partnership.
    4 · The markThe sapling mark and the wordmark, at the foot of the page.

The left and right arrow keys move between frames, and with Command or Control held they go to the first or the last. Escape puts the frame back.

The system

Palette

  • Ground#ECE5D3The page
  • Ink#1C1C1C13.6:1 on ground
  • Text#2D6E3F4.9:1 on ground
  • Fill#2D6E3FFilled blocks
  • Fill ink#ECE5D34.9:1 on fill
  • Edge#C2592A3.5:1 on ground

Type

Headlines
Fraunces
Text
Inter

What happened

Live on cultivate.wales, and the consultancy is trading with it. The client's own words will join this page in time.