The River School
The River School is a mission-driven independent school in Washington, D.C., serving children from 18 months through grade 5. Known for its inclusive community, the school uniquely pairs master’s-level educators with speech-language pathologists in every classroom, supporting both typically hearing students and children with hearing loss through a co-teaching model.
When The River School engaged Design TLC, their primary website was built on an outdated foundation with aging plugins, a cluttered backend, and ongoing technical issues that made updates difficult and affected performance. At the same time, the school was managing their related organizations with distinct audiences and needs, including the Potomac River Clinic and the National Center for Hearing Innovation.
The goal was not only to redesign The River School website, but to establish a modern, reliable digital foundation across the River ecosystem that reflected their expertise, warmth, and leadership in inclusive education and hearing research.
The animated illustration adds a creative and engaging touch to the design.
Objective
Design TLC was tasked with:
- Rebuilding The River School’s website on a modern, stable WordPress foundation and unique, pesonalized design.
- Eliminating technical debt from an outdated site with messy backend systems and legacy plugins.
- Clearly communicating the school’s inclusive mission and innovative co-teaching model.
- Showcasing custom artwork and playful animations without compromising performance.
- Creating cohesive, purpose-built websites for the Potomac River Clinic and the National Center for Hearing Innovation.
- Delivering flexible, easy-to-manage platforms tailored to each organization’s audience and goals.
Approach
Discovery & Technical Audit
We began with a comprehensive audit of the existing River School website, identifying outdated plugins, redundant functionality, performance bottlenecks, and backend inconsistencies. This cleanup work was essential to create a stable foundation before introducing new design and animation elements.
Content & Messaging
For The River School, content was reorganized to emphasize how children learn through observing, wondering, thinking, doing, and discovering. Messaging around inclusion, accessibility, and specialized expertise was integrated throughout the site.
Visual Design
The River School design embraced custom watercolor illustrations created by a River School art teacher, capturing the warmth, creativity, and friendliness of the school community. Thoughtful animations added motion and delight while remaining accessible and age-appropriate.
Development, Cleanup & Performance Optimization
All sites were built on WordPress using Beaver Builder, giving staff and administrators clean, intuitive backends and long-term flexibility. As part of development, we:
- Removed outdated and unnecessary plugins.
- Simplified site architecture and standardized components.
- Improved performance, security, and maintainability across all builds.
Animated artwork originally delivered as Lottie files was optimized by converting it to lightweight MP4 video. This preserved the playful visual experience while significantly improving load times and Core Web Vitals.
The performance in Google Page Speed Insights is impressive for a WordPress website with animation.
Outcome
The redesigned River School website and companion sites:
- Replaced outdated, fragile systems with modern, stable WordPress builds.
- Delivered clean, easy-to-manage backends for the admin team.
- Preserved joyful, custom artwork and animation while dramatically improving performance.
- Created a cohesive digital ecosystem that supports The River School and its affiliated organizations.
Before
New Website
