Work/Case study 05
Nagaokakyo, Kyoto · English school · since 1996
Apple Tree
English School
アップルツリー英語教室
A thirty-year-old neighbourhood school, fully bilingual, with two audiences at once — parents deciding, and children who have to want to walk in.
Homepage, English — the illustration is the layout, not a background図 01
Client
Apple TreeScope
Design & build — six pages, bilingual JP/ENAudience
Parents choosing · ages 2 to adult attendingLive
Visit the site →The brief
Approachable without being generic.
Warmth is the easiest thing for a school site to claim and the hardest to earn. Reach for it carelessly and you land on the same rounded-blue-and-bubbles template every language school in the world is already using — friendly in the way a waiting room is friendly.
Apple Tree has been in Nagaokakyo since 1996. It has a name that's already an image, native-speaking teachers, and learners from age two to adults. The site needed to feel like that specific school on that specific street — not like a category.
Two audiences, one page
Parents decide. They need fees, ages, timetable, who teaches, and how to book a trial — in Japanese, quickly, on a phone. Children attend. They'll see this over a parent's shoulder. It has to look like somewhere worth going, not like paperwork.Three decisions
that made it specific.
Each one was a chance to reach for the template and not take it.
The name became the illustration
One watercolour apple tree, painted at full height with a child reading in its shade, occupying most of the first screen. Not a hero photo, not stock classroom smiles.
Headline type does the warmth
A rounded gothic set large in warm brown, not black — soft terminals, generous counters, and the same face working in Japanese and English.
One red, and it only ever means “book”
Apple red appears on the free-trial pill and almost nowhere else. Green handles links and labels, brown handles text. A parent scanning on a phone never has to work out which button starts things.
Colour system
An apple tree,
literally.
Fruit, leaf, bark, paper. Four values from the thing the school is named after, plus white for cards — which is why the palette needs no explaining to anyone who has seen the logo.
The free-trial pill and JP/EN active state. Reserved — one action per screen.
Eyebrow labels, text links and the NEWS tag. The quiet navigational colour.
All headings and body copy. Brown rather than black is why the page reads as gentle.
Page and header ground. Watercolour edges dissolve into it with no visible box.
Floating information panels only. White means information.
No gradients, no second accent, no tints of the accent. The restraint is what stops “friendly” from tipping into “childish”.
Typography
One rounded gothic,
two writing systems.
The display face had to hold 英語で世界を、もっと大きく。 and “Grow a bigger world through English.” at the same weight and warmth.
Display — Zen Maru Gothic, 700
1.08 leading · −0.5px tracking · bark brown, never blackthrough English.英語で世界を、
もっと大きく。ABCDEFGHIJKLM abcdefghijklm 0123456789
あいうえお・カキクケコ・英語教室
Body — Zen Kaku Gothic New, 400
A warm neighbourhood English school in Nagaokakyo since 1996. Native-speaking teachers help learners from age two to adults study with both joy and purpose.長岡京市で1996年から。ネイティブ講師と一緒に、2歳から大人まで「楽しく、真剣に」学ぶ英会話教室です。A flatter-sided companion to the display face — same family feeling, more efficient at paragraph length.Labels, nav & buttons
Bilingual by design
Japanese is the
primary language.
The parents making the decision are local. So the JP page isn't a translation layer bolted onto an English design — both were composed as first-class versions.
The nav had to fit twice
“Classes & Fees” and 開講クラス・料金 are different widths. Items are spaced by gap, not fixed columns.
Line height set for kana, not Latin
Japanese body copy needs more leading to breathe. Both languages use the looser value so the page rhythm stays identical.
One toggle, always visible
JP / EN sits beside the trial button in red-on-cream. No flag icons, no dropdown, no guessing which is active.
Small moments
The news card is the whole approach in miniature.
A white rounded panel floats over the bottom-right of the illustration: a green NEWS tag, the month, two lines about available places, a red enquiry link, and a dismiss cross. It's the most functional element on the page, sitting on the most decorative one.
A school's real content is seasonal and small: a class opening, a term date, an event. Giving that a permanent, dismissible home meant the homepage never needed redesigning to stay current.
NewsJuly 2026×
Additional places are available in preschool/kindergarten and Grade 1–2 classes.Enquire →Outcome
A school that looks like itself.
Apple Tree now has a site a parent can get an answer out of in under a minute, and a first screen a child will happily look at while that happens. The warmth comes from three real things — a painted tree, a rounded face, a brown instead of a black — rather than decoration applied on top.Across Achi's portfolio, Jungle Juice is loud, Swansong is quiet, Bon's is a zine and this is gentle. The thread is the method: find what the place already is, then build the structure that lets it be seen.Want a site that sounds like you?
achiwebdesign@gmail.com · 0423 626 037