Tutor the Nation

Tutor the Nation is an organisation that aims to bridge the gap in education by providing free tutorage to under-privileged students by pairing them with volunteers from universities across the UK.

I worked directly with the clients to build their brand and collaborated with our developers to build the site. We had great User feedback was that the site was both engaging and memorable (yay!).


Client: Tutor the Nation

Agency: Drew London

Branding & Digital: Sasha Beattie

Product design (Website)
Branding
Illustration

Logo

“Bridging the gap” in education is the core aim of Tutor the Nation, so it was a clear starting point for the logo. After experimenting with graphics, and playing with the word mark to form the H into a dual-purpose motif — as a bridge and a smile, with much trial and error to find the perfect curve and alignment to ensure the “H” was still readable while also resembling a bridge.

From there the slogan, “Bridging the gap in education with a smile” came to mind, communicating the positivity and ethos of the organisation.

Secondary Marks - “Bridget”

After workshops, “With a smile” emerged as such an important part of the brand that it only made sense to create a secondary mark to embody that sentiment, enter in “Bridget” -She is constructed using the H/smile and cutting the O in half to make her eyes, and comes in two forms: colour block and logo-outline. Bridget quickly became the well-loved mascot of the brand.

Primary Colour Palette

Bright, bold and (almost) primary colours create the base of the palette, contrasted by full sections of black and white - the colour palette was aimed around 3 core concepts: exciting, youthful and engaging. It’s (basically) a rainbow, using colours that didn’t feel typically masculine or feminine, there is something for everyone.

Stickers!

Everybody loves stickers, right?
The blocky design of the website is broken up with simple hand-drawn stickers, each symbolising features or sentiments of TtN, from safeguarding to confidence and of course sticker-Bridget. They can also be repurposed as fun recognisable brand assets for social media as image treatments, putting that Tutor the Nation “stamp” on posts, and thinking of the future of this organisation, printed in real life as branded merchandise.

Wireframes

The wireframes for this site were a bit more developed than normal - the client requested to see something that was a bit more hi-res and included the stylised “uplifted” titles, typography, photography and logo designs.

The clients were extremely happy with the wireframes and said that they could really get the feeling for the final product, it was a relief the final site exceeded their expectations based off the wireframes.

The Website

The site design utilises colour blocking, full bleed sections, photography and big bold text to create an open and human centred design with the main goal of recruiting new volunteers/tutors. Information is clearly labeled with easy to find FAQs and contact information.

Accessibility is important, so to create contrast a secondary colour palette was introduced using HSL and font sizes were kept at a larger size. The buttons were rounded and the uplifted/curved titles soften the sharper shapes in the site making it feel balanced and comfortable.

The uplifted titles are meant to symbolise upward momentum, climbing up and “over lap the gap”. It might not be an obvious sentiment to users but

the inference is there and keeps users engaged as they scroll through the site, giving importance to new sections.

Mobile

On mobile the blocks become stacks, this helped to keep the design consistent on all devices and just as user-friendly and open.

As the site doubles as a hub for current tutors to log into their accounts the log in page was mobile optimised.

Social Media Templates

During the scoping phase we found that Social media would be an important part of Tutor the Nation reaching their target: to recruit new volunteers.

Using bold colour block text mixed in with black and white imagery (and stickers) these templates are designed to be fun and informative to catch the eye of potential tutors and schools.