EdTech platforms
FoxEducation & Sdui: designing systems and identity for education across Europe
Date:
February 2022 — September 2025
Roles:
Creative direction, Design strategy, UX and UI Design, Web Design, Visual Identity, Marketing Design, Motion Design
Employer and sector:
FoxEducation & Sdui (Seven Education) / EdTech, SaaS
FoxEducation (FoxEd) is one of the most recognised names in EdTech across the German-speaking world. SchoolFox, its flagship app, has over 1.5 million users across 6,500 schools in Europe, sitting alongside KidsFox for kindergartens and preschools, and TeamFox for clubs and groups. In total, over 9,000 institutions across DACH rely on the FoxApps, including the City of Vienna and the state of Lower Austria among their institutional clients. In 2024, FoxEd was acquired by Sdui Group, and the combined organisation grew to serve over 22,000 institutions across Europe and beyond.
Intro
I joined FoxEducation in February 2022 as Senior Visual Designer and stayed through two acquisitions and a tumultuous transition into a group of companies, eventually becoming Visual Design Expert and Lead Designer at Sdui Group (now Seven Education). For more than three and a half years, my job was to bring visual coherence to products and brands that had outgrown their design foundations. That meant working simultaneously across product and marketing, building and growing a shared design system across teams, redesigning marketing websites, producing campaigns, and ultimately leading a cross-functional design team across four company brands and multiple countries.
Making it happen
Key Challenges
FoxEducation and its apps had a fragmented visual identity. The apps, the marketing website, sales materials, and customer support documents each looked like they belonged to a slightly different company. Layouts, icons, and typographic choices drifted between teams with no shared reference point, and there was no single person whose job it was to fix that.
The gap wasn't just aesthetic. It reflected a structural disconnect between the Product, Marketing, Sales, and Support teams, who worked in parallel without a fully shared design language to anchor them. My role was created specifically to bridge that gap — equal parts product designer and brand designer, operating across both worlds simultaneously.
Also rather challenging was the fact that in the education sector, stakeholders are used to large amounts of information and explanations, and this was the case for FoxEd as well. App onboarding documents, flyers, and other materials often contained far more text than a minimalist designer such as myself is comfortable with. But I did not let this slow me down, and I found the solution in better structuring, layouts, and supporting graphics such as icons.
Audit & Discovery
“Make it happen!” is one of FoxEd’s internal mottos, and that’s exactly what I did. Before proposing anything new, I needed to understand what already existed and where it had drifted.
I audited the company's full visual landscape: the app UI, the marketing website, sales decks, customer support documents, and every recurring asset in between. What I found wasn't chaos (there was genuine design craft across the teams, especially given the limited capabilities they had), but there was no shared foundation and no consistency. Colours and layouts had diverged between product and marketing. Icons used in the apps didn't always match those appearing in flyers or on the website. Typography decisions had sometimes been made independently in each department, and nobody had a single, complete file to point to as the source of truth.
The audit gave me three clear priorities: find ways to communicate what the apps are all about and bring them in the marketing environment, establish a stable and shared design system across all department contexts, and overall define a refreshed and consistent visual language that could scale across every touchpoint without requiring a designer to be in the room every time.
Bridging Product & Marketing
The most persistent challenge at FoxEducation wasn't any single design problem. It was the structural gap between teams that communicated differently, worked in different tools, and had developed their own visual habits independently. My role sat deliberately in the middle of that gap.
On the product side, I worked directly alongside the UX designer and the Business Analysts to design UI elements for app features — creating and adapting components within a shared Figma design system, designing new graphics, illustrations & icons, and translating complex data-heavy app screens into visuals that were clean and easy to grasp at a glance. Those simplified app screens then crossed over into marketing territory: appearing on the redesigned website, in campaign materials, in sales decks and customer support documents. That crossover was intentional and became one of the defining characteristics of the refreshed brand — product and marketing finally speaking the same visual language.
Within the product team we created clear, step-by-step work processes, in which I first received a briefing on the new element(s) needed (with context: eg. new feature, ideas, etc), I then made at least two proposals (sometimes 3-4), placed them in the app screen mock-ups and feedbacked/tested with the team, adapted if necessary and lastly created the final verticals (always vector format) for all sub-brands.
On the marketing side, the output was broad by necessity. I designed digital and print campaigns for new feature launches, newsletter e-mails, produced social media content, created onboarding and support documents for thousands of schools, designed roll-ups, flyers and event materials, and built reusable template systems that non-designers could use independently. I even did video storyboarding sketching for outside agency animators and illustrators as part of marketing video projects.
I created most of the digital marketing materials (SoMe posts, info docs, etc) in Figma for easy collaboration and to maintain structure — for example, by using AutoLayout on some of the content-heavy info documents.
Finnigan the Fox (as it was internally named) was part of the initial visual identity as the mascot of FoxEducation. Since it was a beloved character already appreciated by internal and external stakeholders, I kept it, refining and expanding its role and appearances in the brand.
An integral part of working on the FoxEd identity and materials was expanding it with new branding elements, including custom logos that communicate the same design language. These logos were part of dedicated new app features (for example, FoxPay), video series (FoxTalks), and other projects. All of these, plus the regular elements that make up a complete brand identity (colors, illustrations, motion guidelines, tone of voice, etc), were compiled into a structured, 90+ page Brand Style guide, with dedicated sections covering application on web, SoMe, and more.
The color system at FoxEd has very specific rules of usage, which I separated for its main brand and sub-brands. The dark blue and bright red for accents are primarily used when the company brand is used in communication, and the respective SchoolFox, KidsFox, and TeamFox color palettes are used when referring directly to those specific app brands.
The FoxEd website redesign was a particular milestone. Working in Figma and WordPress with Avada, I designed, built, and maintained the new marketing site, moving from a visually inconsistent, template-feeling layout to something that reflected the updated human-centric brand more clearly and integrated the app experience more cohesively. I collaborated within the Marketing department for content and copywriting, and for custom-coded elements, directly with a developer via handoffs in Figma. The before-and-after difference was significant both in terms of ease of use and in user engagement, with measurable increases in monthly visitors and positive feedback from site visitors (a few teachers gave feedback).
When it comes to image selection, I deliberately chose photography that reflected real diversity in gender, ethnicity, body type, and ability, rather than defaulting to uniformity. That’s because users of the Fox apps are themselves very diverse, and I intended to convey inclusivity.
Micro-animations became a defining characteristic of the website, contributing massively to the brand’s playfulness and approachability, and I did this in AfterEffects with Lottie exports, which are perfectly displayed in all viewport sizes and take up very little space, thus ensuring fast loading times. I also took on video editing and motion design specifically for interviews and promotional content, videos which were used in various formats on different channels (YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Website).
Scale: The Sdui Chapter
When FoxEducation was acquired by Sdui Group, the design challenge didn't change, it multiplied and grew more complex. Where I had previously worked to unify one company's visual language across two teams, I was now looking at four distinct brands: Sdui in Germany, FoxEducation in Austria, Additio App in Spain, and Pupil in Switzerland, each with its own design history, visual habits, separate teams & cultures, and market context. I was promoted to Visual Design Expert and Lead Designer, and tasked with doing at group level what I had done at company level.
The priority was familiar: audit what existed across all four companies, identify where the real communication misalignments were, and find a common visual foundation that could work across different products and markets without flattening each brand's individual character. The following project was even more important, co-led together with the group’s brand strategist, and it involved collaborating on design strategy and fundamentals such as the new logo, colour direction, typography choices, and platform decisions for our main project: a completely new group brand and marketing website.
In March 2026, the major group brand project that I co-led was launched successfully, and Sdui Group became Seven Education. This represented a major milestone for the group, which now has a new, refined, and cohesive identity that brings together all the encompassing companies and their platforms.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools were already present in my work at FoxEd in useful ways to speed up processes. I used AI agents for research & light coding, but I also used built-in generative assistance in tools I was already working with - such as quick automatic background removal in PS or captions generation in AE. At the Sdui Group, AI usage expanded for the entire design team and me to even more useful and applied tools, such as meeting transcripts and task allocation in Slack or AI solutions in Notion, plus even more experimenting with and integrating generative solutions such as Midjourney and Perplexity.
Leadership was a new layer. The small team I managed consisted of three multidisciplinary designers — an art director/graphic designer, a videographer/photographer & brand designer, and a web & brand designer. I was running weekly strategy sessions, one-to-ones, and participating in OKR planning and career development conversations. I coordinated their output across the group's design needs while continuing to contribute hands-on to the design system and brand work myself. I also represented the design team in meetings with external partners and agencies, particularly around the new group website built in Framer and internally for constant project updates.
Over time, the role shifted even further from partial hands-on craft toward full-time people management and strategic coordination. That shift taught me something important about how I work best, which I'll come to in the next section.
Reflection & Outcomes
The outcomes I'm most proud of aren't the individual assets. They're the systems and foundations that kept producing good work even after the initial effort was done. The FoxEd brand style guide that non-designers can actually use. A shared design system library that truly bridged product and marketing for the first time. A redesigned website that reflected the brand consistently and drove measurable growth in monthly visitors. Reusable template systems that reduce the design dependency of other teams. A visual language coherent & mature enough to survive two acquisitions and multiple company brands.
The Sdui chapter added a different kind of learning. One outcome I value from the Sdui chapter is having co-led the visual foundations of the new Seven Education group brand and website. But leading a team clarified something I hadn't fully articulated before: my best work happens when I'm close to the craft. Strategy and people management are skills I developed and applied well, but they're most valuable to me as context for design decisions, not as a replacement for making them. Stepping back into an IC role is something that I’m after, and it’s a deliberate return to where I do my most meaningful work.
If I were to do it again, I'd push earlier for clearer organizational structure, more thorough documentation, and closer cross-departmental collaboration, especially right after the acquisition period when institutional knowledge and accountability were at risk of being lost. I'd also advocate sooner for integrated design systems as teams grow and new companies join, rather than letting it remain an informal responsibility alongside everything else.
Impact
Design work is hard to measure in isolation, and I won't overstate my individual contribution to outcomes that were the result of many teams working together. That said, over my time at FoxEducation and Sdui, the numbers moved in the right direction.
FoxEducation recorded 35% revenue growth in 2024 — a period during which the brand refresh, redesigned website, and campaign output were all active and contributing to how the company presented itself to schools, institutions, and decision-makers across DACH.
One outcome I'm particularly proud of is the City of Vienna tender. I designed the pitch presentations and adapted the parent and teacher welcome materials to the City of Vienna's brand guidelines, work that required precision, attention to institutional detail, and a clear understanding of how design builds trust with public sector clients. The tender was won, making the City of Vienna one of FoxEducation's most significant institutional clients.
The redesigned FoxEducation website drove a 20%+ increase in monthly visitors, and the redesigned support materials contributed to a 35% reduction in support ticket requests. Newsletter redesigns delivered a 30% increase in click rate, combining visual improvements with better content structure to drive measurably stronger engagement. Across the full tenure, the design work touched a user base of over 3 million people across 90+ countries — through the apps, the websites, the campaigns, and the brand materials that represented FoxEducation and Sdui Group at every touchpoint.
Feedback from teachers & other users about the overall design and materials was consistently positive, and that sentiment was echoed internally by colleagues and management throughout my time there.
As the Visual Design Lead on the marketing team, Valentin played a key role in shaping and evolving the visual identity of the FoxEducation brands, and after the merger with Sdui GmbH, those of the entire Sdui Group. His work consistently demonstrated a strong design vision, attention to detail and a deep understanding of how to create visuals that are not only beautiful but also strategically impactful - something I highly appreciated in my roles as CCO and CEO.
Philipp Fendt
CEO/CCO
FoxEducation/Sdui Group