Built with Webflow
Website for a tech education ecosystem for communities
Max Martinez
Building a digital brand for the next generation of tech learners and educators
Ed Farm is an education ecosystem helping communities close digital skills gaps across students, educators, and the workforce.
Founded in partnership with Apple and the Alabama Power Foundation, the organization needed a digital presence capable of communicating a broad mission without losing clarity, energy, or accessibility.
Role: Digital Designer
Scope: Creative Direction, Brand Design, UI/UX Design, Website Design, Webflow Development
Location: Birmingham, AL
Team: Toni Dawkins (Director, Strategic Communications & Marketing)
Timeline: Jul 2024 – Oct 2025
Context: Designing for more than one target audience
Ed Farm works across several connected groups. Students need opportunities to build digital skills. Educators need tools and programs that help them teach those skills. Communities need pathways connecting learning with future opportunities.
The digital experience had to bring those audiences together under one coherent story while helping each quickly find what mattered most.
The previous site communicated the mission, but offered fewer clear paths into the broader ecosystem.
Research: Making technology education feel more human
We explored education, workforce, and technology brands to understand how they balanced innovation with trust and accessibility. The strongest opportunity was already inside Ed Farm itself: real students, educators, programs, spaces, and communities.
Rather than making technology the visual protagonist, the new direction would put the people using it first.
Mapping how education and technology brands balance credibility, energy, and human stories.
Structure: Turning a broad mission into clearer paths
Before styling the site, we simplified the experience around Ed Farm's major areas of work. Programs for students, educators, and the workforce became clearer entry points, supported by learning spaces, apps and innovations, stories, events, and partnership opportunities.
One action stayed deliberately prominent across the experience: Partner with us.
Defining the hierarchy, content system, and primary paths before introducing visual style.
Direction: Choosing people over technology
Two visual directions pushed the brand in different ways. One leaned further into technology with darker surfaces, floating elements, and more graphic compositions. The other made photography the centerpiece—real people, real spaces, bold typography, and the existing Ed Farm identity.
The second felt more authentic to the organization.
Testing a technology-led concept against the warmer, people-first direction that moved forward.
Real community photography became the foundation of the refreshed digital language.
Website: Building one system for a growing brand ecosystem
The final website combines bold typography, flexible gradients, real photography, and reusable components across programs, spaces, stories, events, partnerships, and organizational content.
The goal was consistency without sameness. Each area could have its own focus while still feeling unmistakably part of Ed Farm.
A repeatable hero system connecting programs, events, and organizational pages.
Clear entry points into Ed Farm's major programs and initiatives.
Community: Letting people and places lead
Ed Farm's impact is easier to understand through the communities participating in it. Full-bleed imagery gives physical learning spaces room to feel tangible, while partner voices and stories add proof from the people closest to the work.
Giving the physical learning environment room to become part of the digital experience.
Real community voices building trust through attributed stories and testimonials.
Keeping current programs and community stories visible through reusable editorial content.
Conversion: Making the next step obvious
The site keeps the action hierarchy simple. Newsletter signup provides a lightweight way to stay connected, while partnership remains the primary conversion goal throughout the experience.
A quieter secondary action for visitors who want to stay connected.
Bringing the primary invitation—Partner with us—to the foreground.
Extending the site architecture without competing with the main conversion path.
A system built to grow: Supporting more than programs
The same visual system extends into organizational storytelling, testimonials, history, locations, team content, and contact paths. That gives Ed Farm room to evolve without turning every new need into a separate design system.
Student, educator, and partner voices adding human proof to Ed Farm's impact.
Turning the organization's history into a more scannable story of growth.
Making Ed Farm's growing community presence visible at a glance.
Creating clearer paths for partnerships, media, and general inquiries.
Development: Giving the team room to publish
The website was built in Webflow around reusable components and CMS-driven content. Programs, events, stories, team members, and other evolving content can grow without requiring a new design or development cycle every time.
Responsive behavior was handled as part of the same system so the content hierarchy remains clear across screen sizes.
Extending the visual system into shared links and social previews.
Preserving the homepage hierarchy while simplifying richer content for smaller screens.
Keeping people-focused storytelling clear and usable across mobile layouts.
Outcome: A clearer digital home for a growing education ecosystem
The new site gives Ed Farm a more cohesive digital presence across programs, stories, spaces, and community impact. Instead of treating students, educators, workforce development, and partnerships as separate narratives, the website brings them together around one larger mission.
"Max was instrumental in Ed Farm's complete website overhaul. We needed a site that captured both where we are today and our vision for the future. Max expertly translated our high-level ideas into a clean, visually engaging identity and an intuitive UX. The new site clearly communicates our mission and has received rave reviews from our partners and stakeholders."
— Toni Dawkins, Director of Strategic Communications
Learning today. Building what comes next.
A flexible digital system gives Ed Farm room to grow while keeping its people, programs, and mission at the center.
Full case study: https://www.maxmartinez.com/work/edfarm
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Posted Aug 3, 2026
Website and digital brand for Ed Farm, an education ecosystem founded with Apple and the Alabama Power Foundation. I led creative direction, UI/UX, and Webflow development, bringing students, educators, and partners together under one people-first story.
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Timeline
Jul 1, 2024 - Oct 31, 2025
Clients
Ed Farm
