Magnifying
Children's Horizons.
A values-led children's education programme and its founder's author companion, built with a forest-and-sunlight brand system, real photography only, no AI imagery.
Tolu founded Magnifying Children's Horizons to run Guiding Children with Nature, a values-led programme that helps families raise curious, grounded children through outdoor exploration and story. She is also a published author, with two books to her name: The Face in the Mountain and The Festival Shoes.
She needed two websites, tied together but not identical. One for the programme, one for her author work. Both had to feel like the values the programme teaches.
Early in the brief, Tolu asked about AI-generated imagery for parts of the site. I recommended against it. Her audience is parents choosing an educator for their child, and the trust that decision asks of them is fragile enough without asking them to look past synthetic nature and children who do not exist. The programme's whole premise is real connection to the natural world. Anything less than real imagery would have quietly undermined it. She trusted my judgement.
Beyond the imagery decision, discoverability was essential. Parents finding the programme would mostly arrive through search, not paid ads, so SEO was in the brief from day one.
The brand had to convey a specific feeling: the calm you find in a field with a breeze on your face and sunlight overhead. Palette anchored the mood. Forest green as the primary, sage as the secondary, warm cream as the surround, sunlight gold as the accent. Typography paired Cormorant Garamond for headings with Inter for body, each carrying the same natural calm the palette holds.
Two websites, cross-linked.
The programme website. Guiding Children with Nature explained in warm, clear language that busy parents can move through quickly. They can read the programme overview, meet the founder, read the philosophy, and download the Free Mini Guide, which starts a welcome email sequence introducing them to the programme in more depth.
The author companion. Tolu's story, her books, and Drumlo's Journey: the free printable memory game she designed for young readers, offered when families sign up, which walks them through the events and lessons of the book. Cross-linked back to the programme site so a parent discovering the books can find the programme, and a parent discovering the programme can find the books.
Both websites built on the same brand system for coherence, but with distinct tonal choices. The programme site leans warmly informative. The author website carries whimsy and personality.
On the SEO front, semantic HTML throughout, structured data for programme details and book listings, Open Graph tags tuned for the social contexts where children's content travels (Pinterest, Instagram, parenting Facebook groups). Sitemap generated and submitted. Google Search Console wired to a private dashboard so Tolu sees search performance without opening the tool herself.
“Hilary took a project I barely described and turned it into a brand system, website, and launch plan inside a month.
Seeing my ideas made visible was better than I had imagined. The process was like pouring my soul into a painting, except Hilary channelled me and helped what I envisioned come out in a way everyone could connect with.
The rigour she brings is more than most paid agencies deliver.”