Case study · HykuUP

One platform, three brand identities

HykuUP shows prospective institutions what Hyku can do through three demo repositories, each on a different theme. I designed a complete identity for each one, matched to the kind of collection it holds, and styled the live sites to carry it.

Role: Brand designer and front-end developer
Timeline: August – October 2026
Deliverables: Logos, favicons, palettes, type, site styling
Platform: Hyku, Samvera open source

The three HykuUP demo sites layered together: Meridian's dark video archive, Harborview's warm heritage site and Ellison's navy and gold repository — Meridian, Harborview and Ellison, live at hykuup.com/demo

The brief

Each Hyku theme is built for a different kind of collection: research output, cultural heritage, or audio and video. A demo only convinces if it looks like a real institution of that kind, with real content and a believable brand.

So each demo needed its own organization, logo, favicon, palette and type pairing, chosen to suit its audience and to read well against that theme's layout.

Reference theme · research repository

Ellison

A university repository for theses, articles and research data. Academic navy and gold borrow the authority of a university press, and a calm sage green marks every action.

#1B3A5C navy

#C4A35A gold

#4A7C6B sage

#1B5E4B green

#E6EAE7 mist

#F6F5F2 linen

Search the repository

Cardo for headings · Droid Sans for text

Favicon: the book mark alone

Heritage theme · cultural heritage

Harborview

A historical society's digitized photographs, maps and archival collections. Warm paper tones, walnut brown and harbor slate echo old prints and the sea.

#5C3D2E walnut

#4A6274 harbor slate

#B8963E brass

#F3EDE4 linen

#FFFDF8 paper

#C5C0B9 stone

Explore the collection

Vollkorn for headings · Crimson Text for text

Favicon: the lighthouse alone

Screening Room theme · audio and video

Meridian

An archive of film and recordings, built around the player. A dark screening-room palette lets the footage stand out, with signal blue for actions and amber for highlights.

#0F0F0F projector

#1D1D1D raised

#3B82C4 signal blue

#93BADF light blue

#D4943A amber

#B8B6B2 screen gray

Pilot leaving at Sandy Hook

Inconsolata for headings · Droid Sans for text

Favicon: the globe alone

The result

All three demos are live on HykuUP, where prospective institutions can pick the one closest to their own collection and see it with real content. Alongside the branding, I had 14 pull requests merged into Hyku and Hyrax in five weeks, fixing media playback, an unreadable image viewer and navigation that overlapped content.

See the live demo sites

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