Troy Institute
An AI course that sells like a luxury brand, not a tech product.
Troy Institute runs AI Literacy & Human Connection, a three-day, in-person symposium with forty seats per city, admitted by application. The team had pieced together a rough draft on a stock Squarespace template and needed a site that could turn social media traffic into applications, city after city.
- Client
- Troy Institute
- Industry
- Education & events
- Format
- 3-day in-person symposium
- Cohort
- 40 seats per city
- Built on
- Squarespace
The starting point
The draft was built on the closest template the team could find. It had the right idea, video up front and a simple structure, but it came with booking features built for one-on-one appointments they didn’t need, and it looked like every other course site.
The product is unusual for the category. It isn’t an online course, it’s three days at a table with professors and a small group of peers, and admission is by application rather than checkout. The site had to make that feel exclusive and worth traveling for, then move people from Instagram to an application in as few steps as possible.
What they asked for
- A luxury, editorial feel in the spirit of Dior, Ralph Lauren and Vogue, less “AI” and more fashion house
- Video up front, big photography and a mix of typefaces
- A page for every city, with future cities pushed on every visit
- An application instead of a checkout, with the option to apply by video
- The three-day curriculum laid out day by day
- A traditional top navigation that just works
What we built
Instead of patching the template, I sent a homepage concept the day after our call and built the site custom from there. The homepage opens on a full-screen video of the host city with “AI Literacy & Human Connection” in large editorial type, then cards for the next cities and a short manifesto: AI literacy taught beyond the screen, three days, in person.
The next symposium gets its own card with dates, tuition and an apply button, followed by a tabbed day-by-day curriculum, an upcoming locations row from New York and Miami to Amsterdam, London and Paris, a three-step admission section and an FAQ. Each city is its own event page, so adding a new city is a matter of adding an event.
The application asks about current AI use, the workflow each applicant wants to build and interest in the optional dinner programming, and anyone who would rather talk than type can send a video by link or email. A newsletter sign-up at the bottom collects everyone who isn’t ready to apply for this city yet.
The result
A site that reads like a luxury brand and works like a funnel: every page leads to an application, every visitor sees the next city, and new locations go live without a redesign.
