Redinc

The idea

Teachers spend their working lives growing other people and get very little help growing themselves. What is on offer rarely fits: full-time programmes, two more years of study, theory with no classroom in it. The teachers we meet say it in their own words. “Demo lessons terrify me.” “I don’t know what schools in the UAE actually expect.” “I need something practical, not academic.” Redinc exists for them: a teacher professional development company run by teachers, with short, practical, certificate-bearing courses, live workshops and webinars for teachers in the UAE and India.

I co-founded Redinc with Rasna Hussain, Rumaiza Mohamed and Arshad Muhammed. Rasna and Rumaiza are working teachers, and they own the teaching. I own everything the teaching travels through: the brand, the website, the platform, the print, the decks and the photographs. That split is the point. Teachers know what to teach and in what order. A designer inside the company makes sure nothing between the teacher and the lesson gets in the way.

The name carries the conviction. Red ink is the mark a teacher leaves on a page. Most people remember it as judgement. We take the other reading, the correction that shows you where to go next, so Red Ink became Redinc.

Redinc teaches through courses, live webinars and in-person workshops. Its flagship workshop, The Classroom Code, is a five hour day in Dubai for aspiring teachers: lesson planning, classroom management, live demo lessons and interview practice.

Brand

The mark is a graduation cap on an open book, drawn as one flat shape. The cap stands for achievement and the book for learning, and the book’s lower edge comes to a point: the nib of the red pen, for guidance and correction. Three ideas, one silhouette.

One colour does the work. #721513 is a burgundy rather than a red, Pantone 7623C in print, and it is allowed to be the whole page. A warm orange is kept for small accents, with a peach and a cream as tints. The cap sits cream or white on burgundy, never burgundy on burgundy. There is no dark theme, because everything Redinc makes sits on paper.

Headings are Recoleta Bold, a warm serif with the weight of a textbook title. Body text is Figtree, plain and open, easy on a phone between lessons. The wordmark is Redinc in the serif, with academy in Figtree beneath it where the full name is wanted.

The background texture is squared paper, the faint grid of an exercise book. It runs under welcome notes, posters and the workshop sub-brand, The ClassroomCode by Redinc, and keeps the classroom in the frame without a stock photo. The same system covers stationery, a pin badge, a deck template with Recoleta headlines on cream and burgundy section breaks, and an acrylic memento made for the first workshop.

Product

redinc.academy is the shop and the classroom in one place. The public side is the course catalogue, workshops and webinars, downloadable resources and checkout. Behind the login, a course is a set of modules, each with its lessons and a checkpoint at the end, and a certificate arrives once every checkpoint is passed. Every certificate has a public page at its own code, so a school can check that it is real.

The home page opens on the teachers’ own words. Behind the headline runs a slow field of the worries we keep hearing, with the headline in burgundy Recoleta over them. The product makes the same promise the name does: we have read your page, and here is where to go next.

The decisions that shape it:

• Nobody registers. An account appears when someone enrols or when we add them, and signing in is a link sent by email. No password to invent, none to forget.
• Free webinars take no login and no form. If it’s free, we don’t need a login.
• A workshop is one thing with three paths: a free webinar, a paid webinar, or an in-person day paid for offline and signed off by a person. It can run as a series, and its recording can go on sale after the live date.
• Prices include tax. The number on the page is the number charged.
• The platform speaks the teachers’ language: Student, never user; Checkpoint, never quiz; Enrollment, never purchase. Nobody has to translate.

More than 1,500 students, teachers and professionals have learned with Redinc, and its courses, recordings and resources are available at redinc.academy.

Principles

• Teachers own the teaching. Design clears the path to it.
• One colour, allowed to be the whole page.
• Name things in the teachers’ words.
• If it’s free, it needs no login.