New Identity and Website

Other Good Things

We have a new logo at Baan Dek! We’ve also taken this opportunity to refresh our website. We’d love to explain the reason for the changes and elaborate on some of the key new features.

With the logo, we wanted an identity system that was more flexible, one that better reflected the personalized nature of our school, and how we’re solely committed to help children grow.

We reached out to our friends at Fuzzco, one of the best design agencies on the planet, and over a series of productive exchanges, arrived at this lovely treatment:

We don’t want to overwhelm you with symbolism, but we thought it might be helpful to point out one of our absolute favorite things about this new mark. If you turn your head sideways, not unlike how when you turn your head sideways with the bead cabinet to see the outlines of the pink tower revealed, you’ll see a “b” and a “d” united together.

With the flexibility of this new identity system, we can use these different treatments in different ways. We decided to adopt the black and white outline for use on the website and around school. This is mainly because we wanted the logo to serve as the platform to showcase the excellent work that happens everyday, often vividly captured in colorful photographs and videos. That said, be on the look out for the color version. It pops up in the most unexpected of places!

As you settle in with the logo, and we really hope you like it, here are a few cool new features of the website, including a new navigational layout and a dashing new font. A special thanks to New Over for their craftsmanship.

Home page:

We wanted to update the home page to reflect the type of visitors that frequent our site. With prospective parents, we worked to optimize the experience, to make information more readily accessible, including a brief section with some of the most frequently asked questions; with teachers and families, we also wanted to provide a quicker overview of the latest news and updates, especially the blog posts, spotlights and other tips we offer, to make our resources more available at a glance.

Blog Page:

We probably spend more time on our blog than any other part of the website. We wanted to spruce this up to make it easier to navigate. While we’ve always tried to place a special emphasis on the reading experience, with nice visuals, big and easy-to-read fonts, we’ve added a few features, including: a category tagging system, so you can search for the content that you find of most interest; social links to share content you find relevant (including hovering over the text and selecting what to share! Give it a try!); and, an authorship tag, so you can see the individual writer who made the contribution. We’ve also added a “You Might Also Like This” section to highlight other suggested and relevant posts.

About Page:

The last major structural change we made to the site was to add an About page. We thought the about section deserved it’s own treatment. As we visit other sites, we often find ourselves searching to find out more about the organization, the people that make it run, and their philosophy and mission. We thought having a standalone about page might be a helpful, streamlined way, to share who we are with the world.

We hope you enjoy the new logo and the site changes!

We look forward to blue skies ahead!