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08 · Spanish teachingIndependent Design Study

Spanisch und Kultur

She isn't selling Spanish — she's selling the table.

Spanisch und Kultur is Luciana Rivas Mariño's Spanish-teaching practice in Weiningen, canton of Zürich. It is one person: her. She founded Spanisch und Kultur in 2020 and has taught Spanish since 2006.

The Spanisch und Kultur website, designed by Aperture
What we noticed

The site spoke like an anonymous school — «our experienced native teachers» — when the business is a single woman. Dressing something singular as an institution, it paid the price with the one thing that truly sets her apart. Because almost any Spanish teacher is a native speaker; almost none has been, as an adult, a beginner. Luciana learned German as an adult, in Ulm, while teaching. That — the most hers — was buried.

The Spanisch und Kultur site: «Über mich», Luciana in the first person
Why it mattered

«Spanish and culture» is not a difference: four local competitors say exactly that. Her real difference is precisely the part that doesn't scale — having sat on the other side of the table. And because she wants this to become her main income, the site couldn't only express: it had to convince, without ceasing to be her.

The Spanisch und Kultur site: what happens in those ninety minutes of class
What changed

Her hand-painted logo was kept — it's her own work; the voice moved to «I» and «you»; and the design was made warm and handmade — «a well-kept table, not a well-behaved website» — precisely so as not to fall into the editorial restraint that would have erased her. Colour runs as a sequence, one hue per section.

And where the old site implied a seal it doesn't hold, the new one says it plainly: it is not an accredited Instituto Cervantes centre nor a DELE examination centre — it prepares students for those exams, and that is told in words, not logos. Prices, levels and dates are marked as placeholders until she confirms them.

What became possible

A private preview that proves the direction — the singular voice, the warmth, the commercial spine — without yet deciding her prices, her levels, her dates or the final logo artwork. It's a study: nothing launched, her live site untouched, no results to show.

A teacher who finally introduces herself as a person, not an institution.

An independent design study, published with the teacher's permission.