UP4 MINT

MINT is the German-language STEM: Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaft, Technik. ETH Zurich and UBS Switzerland wanted a national platform to get more Swiss children into those subjects early — and, crucially, to reach them through their parents.

ETH put it out to open tender in January 2024. The ask was unusually wide for one contract: concept, design, WordPress build, content production including editorial responsibility, promotion, and ongoing development. Not a website project. A publication somebody would have to keep running.

We read the audience wider than parents alone. Three groups, one site: parents, teachers, and teenagers choosing what to study — Für Eltern, Für Lehrer, Studienwahl.

A parent arrives with a situation rather than a category, so the homepage asks in their words. The three routes are sentences: I want to play with my child. I want to support my child at school. I want to guide my child through choosing a career.

Same child, three reasons to be there, three different depths of content underneath.

The centre of the site: MINT programmes gathered in one index, filtered on the things that actually decide whether a child can attend — Zeitraum, Alter, Region, Thema, Kosten — with a map view for the parent who only wants to know what is near them.

Cards carry the practical facts on the face: age band, duration, dates, whether registration is still open. Enough to rule a programme in or out without opening it.

I drew it for phone as well as desktop, since a parent looking for something to do on Saturday is looking on a phone. The lime badge, the collage carousel and the intent cards all had to survive the narrow column.

The site also had things to do in it, not only things to book: printable experiment sheets a parent can run at the kitchen table. Die Zauber-Lupe, an experiment on colour perception, with a materials list and steps.

The contract went to Zeix, with Kommpakt on the campaign. They spent fourteen months on it and launched up4mint.ch in November 2025, which took a Best of Swiss Web bronze in Public Value the following year.

Their answer narrowed where ours widened. The live portal is built for parents of 8 to 12 year olds, with the content organised as a feed of «superpowers». We had built for parents, teachers and teenagers at once. One brief, two defensible readings, and theirs was the one that got made.

I am including it because leading the front-end design of a tender is a real part of the job, and because most portfolios only show the ones that landed.