New client: Edovo asks Buena to rebrand education behind bars
Edovo puts free courses on prison tablets for about a million people, with a startup’s brand. It asked us for the whole stack: strategy, design, language and a website.
Michael Santos spent 26 years in federal prison and came out with degrees, books and a plan. The nonprofit he founded, Prison Professors, helps justice-impacted people prepare for success after prison. This month it asked Buena for a new brand and a new website. It is our second client in education for people inside, after Edovo.
A founder who used his time inside
Santos is the clearest proof of his own mission. He treated his sentence as preparation, and he built Prison Professors to help others do the same. Its courses reach people on tablets in jails and prisons nationwide, and its founder page counts more than 1,100 facilities that offer its lessons.
Prison Professors, as we start
- 26 yearsMichael Santos served in federal prisonHe came out with degrees, books and a plan, and founded Prison Professors.
- 1,100+facilities offering its lessonsJails and prisons where people can take Prison Professors courses on tablets, by the nonprofit’s count.
Hopeful work, a consulting firm’s look
The trouble is how it looks. The brand is scattered and dated, and it reads more like a consulting business than a nonprofit. That matters for the people Prison Professors serves: someone inside, or a family member at home, should see hope the moment they arrive, not a sales pitch.
The brief is in three parts.
A new identity
A brand as hopeful as the mission, with room for the founder’s books.
A new site
Built around the people Prison Professors serves, with their stories up front.
Real tools
Free lessons and practical help for people and families facing a sentence.
What came next
We built the brand on one idea: hope, with structure. The logomark became a set of interlocking paths in bold purple, orange, yellow and blue, with a hand-drawn ornament system that looks like something breaking loose. We carried it onto the covers of Santos’s books, so his titles and the nonprofit finally look like family.
Hope starts here.
The new site offers free lessons, an AI assistant, a sentence calculator and profiles where learners document their growth, with clear ways to donate, buy a book or send a free book to someone in prison. See the whole case in Prison Professors.
The people Prison Professors serves are building a future with very little to build it with. Their nonprofit should look like it believes in them.
