Adversent

The brief

Adversent was a brand new e-learning platform built to help beginners and experienced marketers improve their skills in Facebook, Google and YouTube advertising. The market was crowded with generic course platforms — dry, generic and uninspiring. The brief was to build something that felt completely different.

I led everything: brand identity, website, platform UX, dashboard design, eBook production, and the video content itself — directing shoots with actors in a production studio and overseeing the editing, graphics and sound.

The brand

Most e-learning brands look the same — corporate blues, stock photography, badges and progress bars. Adversent needed to look like it was built by people who actually understood advertising, and who respected the intelligence of their audience.

The visual identity was built around a dark navy and coral palette — a deliberate break from the lighter, more academic look of competing platforms. Navy gave it authority and credibility. Coral gave it energy and warmth. The logo treatment — "ad" bold, "versent" lighter — called out the advertising focus immediately while the full stop gave it confidence and finality.

The brief was to build something that felt more like Netflix than an online course — content you'd want to watch, not content you felt obliged to complete.

Video production

The course content wasn't bought in or outsourced — we built a production studio and I directed the shoots myself. Actors came in, I directed the performances and the on-camera delivery, and then worked through the editing process adding motion graphics, lower thirds and sound design aligned with the brand identity.

The video direction had a specific brief: the content needed to feel engaging and watchable, not like a recorded lecture. That meant proper camera work, considered lighting, dynamic editing and on-screen graphics that reinforced the learning points rather than just restating them.

• Full production direction — casting, studio setup, on-camera direction and performance coaching.
• Post-production oversight — editing, motion graphics, lower thirds and sound design all aligned to the brand system.
• On-screen graphic templates built within the brand identity so new course content could be produced consistently without starting from scratch each time.
• eBook design developed alongside each course — downloadable reference material in the same visual language as the platform and video.

The outcome

Adversent launched with a brand and platform that stood out immediately in a crowded market. Early students achieved a 35% course completion rate — significantly above the industry norm for online learning, where most platforms struggle to get users past the first lesson.

The platform was killed by funding running out rather than a product failure. What it demonstrated was that the reference point you choose matters — designing against Netflix rather than against other e-learning platforms produced something that felt genuinely different, and users responded to that.