Kgotla: a clearer brand and website for leadership consultancy
Studio Disegnat, a design studio from Zagreb, refreshed the visual identity and designed the new website for Kgotla®, the leadership consultancy founded by Martijn de Liefde, with offices in the Netherlands and Hong Kong. Built on the principle of “Leadership through dialogue”, Kgotla has helped 85 organisations make change happen with every employee for over two decades. The new brand and website make that work clear at first glance.
CLIENT
The Kgotla Ventures B.V., The Netherlands
YEAR
2026
SERVICES
Brand identity, Web design, Brand assets
DESIGN TEAM
Grgo and Josipa Petrov
WEB DEVELOPMENT
Nikola Tandara
COPYWRITING
Lisa Glasgow
Details
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Over twenty years Kgotla has worked with 85 organisations, from Rio Tinto and KLM to Rabobank and the Dutch Red Cross, and listened to more than 82,500 people. The old website showed little of that. It had grown into a maze of programmes, sub-services and names, and visitors left without understanding what Kgotla actually does. With the company now active in Europe and Asia, with offices in the Netherlands and Hong Kong SAR, the brand had to earn the trust of senior leaders on both continents at first glance.
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We kept the surface calm and geometric, because the audience is boards, CEOs and HR directors who need to trust before they explore. Warmth comes later: storytelling, metaphor and hand-drawn illustration live on the deeper pages. The logo was refined rather than reinvented and paired with a blue-to-teal gradient, TT Ramillas and Ubuntu, and a set of illustrated icons that animate as you scroll. On the site, everything was consolidated into three services: Leadership Navigator, the Kgotla® Intervention and Leadership Expeditions. Every page is built from one shared set of sections, so the site can grow, and is ready for a Chinese version, without new layouts.
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The new kgotla.com is clear about what Kgotla does and for whom, and Martijn can now send it to anyone. Free publications are delivered automatically in exchange for a short form, turning the library into a lead-capture tool. Nine client stories share one case study template, and new pages give Kgotla’s newer work a home: Taking Leadership to the Seas, the Universal Life Cycle App, the Leadership Explorers Club and About Kgotla. The same system now runs through business cards, stationery, LinkedIn and newsletter templates.
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• Logo refresh, colour palette and typography
• Brand style guide
• Illustrated icon set with web animations
• Brand illustration
• Information architecture and wireframes
• Website UX/UI design, desktop and mobile
• WordPress build
• Automated free downloads with lead capture
• Business cards and stationery
• LinkedIn and newsletter templates
• Digital brochure
Kgotla website – before & after
Three services up front, impact stories with real numbers, the Universal Life Cycle App with an interactive infographic, and a library of books and free publications. Designed for desktop and mobile, built in WordPress.
Old Kgotla website which we restructured, made clearer and modernised.
Kgotla logo — before & after
The mark was refined, not replaced: cleaner geometry, a confident wordmark and a gradient that carries through every touchpoint.
BEFORE
AFTER
Icons & Illustration
Nine illustrated icons turn Kgotla’s services and themes into white linework inside the signature blue-to-teal gradient circle. The top row shows what Kgotla facilitates: Large Scale Transformations, Employee Engagement and Belonging, and Internal Collaboration and Culture. The middle row stands for the approaches behind the work: the Universal Life Cycle, Metaphorical Management and the Selfness Program. The bottom row marks the three core services: Leadership Navigator, the Kgotla® Intervention and Leadership Expeditions. On kgotla.com the icons animate gently as visitors scroll. The first brand illustration, the Gordian knot, opens a series of hand-drawn metaphors for the service pages.
Brand assets
The identity carried into print and social: premium business cards, a letterhead and stationery, LinkedIn post templates and a digital brochure that reuses the website’s structure and copy.
COMING SOON
“For years our website was a maze. People arrived curious and left confused about what Kgotla actually does. Grgo and Nikola untied that knot. Now I send kgotla.com to anyone, a CEO in Amsterdam or a partner in Hong Kong, and it explains Kgotla before we’ve even met.”
— Martijn de Liefde, Founder and Dialogue Navigator at Kgotla
DESIGN TEAM
Grgo and Josipa Petrov
DEVELOPMENT
Nikola Tandara, Cirkka
COPYWRITING
Lisa Glasgow
CLIENT
Martijn de Liefde
WEBSITE