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Le Lien

[ 2026 ]

  • Brand strategy, art direction & MVP development
  • Web

A fictional platform connecting committed freelancers with impact-driven companies, imagined and built as a team over several months of my Master's: from research to brand, all the way to a live MVP.

See the live project
LeLien hero

Le Lien is a fictional project: a company invented from scratch for my Master's, which my classmates and I worked on for several months, like a real product team. The idea: freelance platforms sort by skills, never by values. Le Lien starts from the opposite and brings together freelancers who want meaningful work with committed companies (B Corp, social economy). I led the brand strategy and art direction, then built the MVP.

The process

It all started in the field. Before drawing anything, we combined market sources on freelancing with a series of interviews with freelancers and companies. The finding was twofold: a saturated market, and on both sides a real need for meaning.

Those interviews produced two targets with opposite fears: a young freelancer looking for missions that fit her values and afraid of wasting time on an empty platform, and a business owner who wants to hire responsibly without giving up reliability. For each, we mapped what they see, feel and fear, then walked through their journey, from discovery to sign-up. For every obstacle, an answer in the interface: visible labels and projects to reassure freelancers, verified profiles and highlighted certifications to reassure companies.

That work set the brand's tone: it had to inspire and reassure at the same time, make people want to join a movement without ever looking amateurish.

Art direction

A direction in five words: clean, comfortable, structured, sober, and room to breathe, with a moodboard drawn from biophilic design. Three colours, each with a precise role: a cream #F5F4ED for backgrounds, a forest green #274038 for text, a terracotta #C66140 for headings and buttons, contrast checked. Unbounded for headings, for a modern tech feel; Inter for comfortable reading. A descriptive logo, understood at a glance, and a favicon drawn to stay legible at 16 pixels.

  • Brand direction: clean, comfort, structured, sober, breathing room, with a moodboard.
  • Colours: #F5F4ED for background, #274038 for text, #C66140 for headings and buttons.
  • Typefaces: Unbounded for headings, Inter for body text.
  • The Le Lien logo and its favicon, legible at 16 pixels.

The MVP

So the project wouldn't stay a slide deck, I built an MVP in Next.js with over 30 pages. The public site presents the vision, the offers for freelancers and companies, certifications and partners. Behind it, two logged-in spaces: one for companies (missions, talent search, applications received, messaging) and one for freelancers (recommended missions with a match rate, applications, profile, messages). GSAP and Framer Motion animations, deployed on Vercel.

  • “A platform built for impact” section: 100% certified companies, 0% hidden fees.
  • Company space: ongoing missions, recent applications and upcoming meetings.
  • Freelancer space: recommended missions with match rates, stats and calendar.
The public site and the two logged-in spaces (sample data).

What's next

Two next steps, in line with the brand's values: leave Vercel for a green, sovereign host, and turn the site into an installable app (PWA) that can send notifications, so a new mission never goes unnoticed.

Tools

Figma · Next.js · React · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS · GSAP · Framer Motion · Vercel

Credits

Role
Brand strategy, art direction & MVP development
Timeline
Several months
In collaboration with
Mes camarades de Master

Team