Our Future Health
Ark – Brand refresh and website for prominent education sector innovator
2024 – ongoing
Ark is an education charity working to ensure that all children have access to a great education and real choices in life, regardless of their background.
We were commissioned by Ark to refresh their brand identity for increased flexibility and impact across online and offline channels. We then reimagined how they present their work, running schools and innovative education programmes, through a new website.
Brand and website design in parallel
Ark made the decision to run the brand and website projects concurrently which, in our experience, produces the best results. Their brief was for a refresh rather than a complete overhaul, so we spent time speaking with key staff members and interrogating the strengths and weaknesses of the existing brand, ensuring that we retained a sense of heritage while injecting a little modernity.
A simple and pared-back approach was used to ensure maximum sustainability across channels, so we concentrated on ensuring consistent details of type and colour.
Authenticity was key, so all of the photography on the site depicts the people that they work with, and specific context is provided wherever possible via dedicated image captions. This is further supported by quotes from staff, partners and beneficiaries. Data and statistics are also displayed prominently throughout to demonstrate Ark’s impact.
Organising a wealth of information
As well as running 39 schools in Birmingham, Hastings, London and Portsmouth, Ark also lead on a number of other ventures that are designed to deliver wider systemic impact. They have a long and varied history of developing programmes and have incubated more than 20 organisations that improve the lives of children. A key challenge of the information architecture was to provide clear and intuitive routes into information about all of this current and historical activity.
For the each school, the new website includes a landing page with a logo, key governance information, latest news and clear signposting out to the existing external websites that are used by parents and students. The set of schools is rolled up into a full listing and interactive map, both filterable by educational stage.
Syndication of vacancy data across the site
Employment and careers is a big focus for Ark. We delivered a full integration of their applicant tracking system (ATS), which allowed us to pull in vacancy information in a structured and filterable format.
Relevant information is then syndicated around the website to be seen on specific schools pages and dedicated locations pages within the careers section. All current vacancies are also available via a full listing with multiple filtering options.
