PROJECT SCOPE —

Art Direction, UX/UI, Site Redesign

Overview

Redesign of Active Cultures’ web experience with a focus on improved accessibility.

Designed at — The Stable (acquired by Accenture Song)

Role — UX/UI Design Lead

Project Model — Redesign

Site Launch — November 2023

Challenge

Active Cultures is a public arts organization in Los Angeles exploring the confluence of food and art through public projects, programs, and publishing.

Our team was tasked with refreshing the Active Cultures’ brand strategy, visual identity, art direction, and site redesign. My primary challenge was to incorporate Active Cultures’ bright and bold color palette and art-forward personality, while also balancing accessibility.

Team

UX/UI Design — Tiffany Newman

Art Direction — Sarah Johnson, Daniel Lurvey

Brand Strategy — Sarah Nystuen

Brand Guidelines Refresh

Prior to our engagement with Active Cultures, their site lacked accessibility and clear language to describe their mission and purpose. During this project, we finessed the brand statement, mission, and branding tone and voice to more clearly and concisely describe the nature of their work and artist-led projects. We also refreshed their visual identity on social media by creating templates for their team to utilize when promoting events and other announcements. Our team also focused on accessibility and added a secondary color palette to support the bright and bold primary color palette.

Color “Randomizing” Feature

Active Cultures caters to the arts community, with an emphasis on experimentation and exploration. The organization wanted the quirkiness of their brand to feel immersive throughout the site experience. Their previous site had a color “randomizing” feature, where the colors throughout the page would change upon refresh or navigating back to a landing page. In order to make this feature more accessible during the site redesign, we created a system so that the color pairings are intentional, yet the feature remains fun and unexpected to match the brand personality.

Homepage

BEFORE —

AFTER —

Improvements

  • Revamped navigation to display all tabs and replace the previous hamburger menu

  • Ensure accessibility with all color pairings

  • Incorporate an image to give viewers a visual overview of what Active Cultures is about

Navigation

BEFORE —

AFTER —

Improvements

  • Ensure accessibility with background and text color pairings

  • Incorporate a delightfully fun hover animations for navigation tabs

  • Improve information architecture to better fit the content needs of the organization

Projects

BEFORE —

AFTER —

Improvements

  • Designed a more user-centered approach by improving the categorization and layout of projects 

  • Ensured accessibility through color usage

  • Included a column of project dates to add more context around the projects

  • Incorporated images into the hover states to give viewers a preview of the project contents

Project Details

BEFORE —

AFTER —

Improvements

  • Create a stronger sense of text hierarchy by adding headings and separation between sections

  • Shorten width of text boxes to increase legibility

  • Add more emphasis on the artist by adding a designated bio section, linking to more info about the artist

  • Add image and video carousel

  • Ensure accessibility with all color pairings

Microinteractions

While incorporating playful elements, I designed a call-to-action hover state that adds a quirky, unexpected, and fun moment to play up the brand personality.

Conclusion

I come from a background in fine art and I love pushing the boundaries of what’s possible within CMS platforms, which I got to explore throughout this project. I’m intrigued by the ways in which we can add micro-interactions and motion to further drive brand personality throughout a site. I’m grateful for my team, who helped push this art-forward concept, while also maintaining accessibility. This project was a fun challenge.

NEXT CASE STUDY —

Redesign of Sergio Rossi’s eCommerce experience to immerse viewers into the world of the Italian luxury footwear company.