von Wartenberg Leadership
The complete web presence for Dr. Peter von Wartenberg, who advises executives and organisations on leadership. Brand first: the “Rising Arcs” mark and the claim “Learn to Serve & Protect”, then a bilingual site built to carry them — Next.js and Tailwind, Payload as the CMS on Neon Postgres, Brevo behind the newsletter, Vercel for delivery. Pages, blog and mailing list belong to the client, and the release pipeline keeps a cosmetic change from breaking anything underneath it.
Scope and stack
What I did
- Brand identity
- Logo — the “Rising Arcs” mark
- Corporate design
- Motion & animation
- Animated logo & level states
- Web design
- Payload CMS setup
- Newsletter & blog
- Bilingual DE / EN
- CI/CD and guardrails
What it runs on
- Next.js
- Tailwind CSS
- Payload CMS
- Neon Postgres
- Brevo
- Vercel
- TypeScript
Overview
The challenge
A leadership consultancy where the founder is the product needs a web presence that carries a brand, not a template — and it needs to keep moving afterwards. The usual outcomes are both bad: a bespoke site that calcifies because every text change requires the developer who built it, or a page builder that stays editable by trading away the identity, the performance and the ability to do anything unusual.
The solution
Identity first. The “Rising Arcs” mark reads as four levels at once — the person, leading yourself, leading your team, leading your business — so the brand carries the method rather than decorating it, and the claim “Learn to Serve & Protect” sits on top of it. It then does a second job as wayfinding: each of the three level pages lights its own arc, inner to outer, so the logo tells you where you are. The motion follows the same logic rather than being applied on top of it — the arcs draw themselves in one after another, a beat apart, the centre dot pops in behind them, and everything settles into a slow out-of-phase sway that never quite stops. A mark about growth that grows as you watch it. Then a bilingual Next.js and Tailwind site built to hold that: Payload as the CMS on Neon Postgres, Brevo behind the newsletter, Vercel for delivery. Pages, posts and the mailing list belong to the client. The part that makes it last is the release process — security and performance guardrails plus a CI/CD pipeline tuned so cosmetic changes are safe to make with a coding assistant, while anything that would break the backend fails before it ships. The client can keep changing their own site without being able to break it.
03Key features
- The “Rising Arcs” identity — one mark reading as four levels of leadership
- The mark doubles as navigation: each level page lights its own arc
- Motion built into the identity — the arcs draw themselves in, then breathe
- Full corporate design: navy and light-blue palette, Space Grotesk with Archivo
- Payload CMS on Neon Postgres — pages, posts and media owned by the client
- Blog and a Brevo newsletter, published without a developer in the loop
- Bilingual German and English throughout
- Hardened defaults, performance budgets and type safety enforced in CI
- Preview deployments on Vercel for every change before it goes live
04Customer benefits
- A brand that reads as one thing across the site, the deck and the inbox
- Publish a post or send a newsletter without booking developer time
- Change copy, colour and layout safely with a coding assistant
- Breaking changes fail in CI rather than in front of a client
- No retainer required to keep the site moving
A look inside
Related projects
This is what I build for clients
Consultants, coaches, advisors — one person whose reputation is the product. I design and build the whole thing: identity and logo through to a running site with a CMS, a blog and a newsletter behind it, handed over so you can keep changing it without me.
Brand & corporate design
Logo, palette, type and motion — the identity before the site.
A site you own
Pages, blog and newsletter in a CMS with your name on it.
Guardrails, not handcuffs
Security, speed and correctness, checked automatically.
Handover that survives me
A codebase where you can change copy and colour without me.
Interested in a similar solution?
Every project is unique, but the principles and craft shown here can be adapted to solve your specific challenges.