Hereford College of Arts is a proudly small and specialist institution with a history stretching back 170 years, and a radically personal approach to creative education. The College needed a new website to support student recruitment, reflect their evolving identity, and provide a seamless experience for a new generation of digital-native users.
We responded by designing and delivering a digital platform that not only works hard for its audiences, but feels like HCA, personal, expressive, a little off-centre, and full of heart. From a homepage that invites users to draw directly onto the screen, to curated content journeys that mirror the College’s one-to-one teaching approach, this project was never about flashy features for the sake of it. It was about building a digital experience that is as distinctive and human as the place itself.
The innovation on this project didn’t start with tech, it started with listening. During a two-day campus immersion, we met tutors, course leaders, and students across the College. What emerged was a clear story: HCA offers a more personal, more connected, and more tactile learning experience than most larger institutions. That narrative became our north star.
We translated HCA’s philosophy into user experience. The homepage invites prospective students to “make their mark” via a digital sketchbook, an idea sparked by a tutor’s offhand comment and a real sketchpad in hand. The drawing canvas sets the tone for a creative, exploratory journey before a single form field appears.
We also introduced personalisation features, users can “like” and save pages to build a tailored shortlist, without needing to log in. This light-touch functionality mirrors the College’s 1:1 pedagogy: it’s bespoke, without being heavy-handed.
An intelligent content suggestions block guides users to explore further, while adaptable course filtering (e.g. “I work with clay”) enables discovery in a way that feels natural to creative thinkers, not just linear or academic.
Even the visual language challenged convention. We paired a hand-finished-style, characterful typeface with a clean digital layout. The result is something that feels handcrafted and honest, but also future-facing, like HCA itself.
Engagement rate increased from 50% to 70%, exceeding sector benchmarks and meeting Google’s “excellent” threshold.
Session duration has nearly doubled, from 2:26 to 4:25, evidence of deep user interaction and successful storytelling.
Course page performance is outstanding, averaging 80% engagement. Specialist courses like Artist Blacksmithing regularly clock session durations of over 4 minutes.
Among the top 99 most visited pages, 98 exceed a 70% engagement rate. a strong indicator that the most strategically important content is connecting with users.