Artists and art lovers unite! One of our recent projects was to design and build a new website for the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. The design was on the splashy side, and development was fun too—lots of bells and whistles, as well as some strong core functionality.

The Client

The Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis (RAC) is the leading public catalyst for arts and culture in St. Louis, using the power of creativity to strengthen and enrich the community.

The Challenge

RAC’s website is a hub for many facets of the organization, including a calendar of arts events in the community, a public art directory, grants, programs, and resources for artists and arts organizations.

The website content needed to be presented to several distinct audiences with differing user journeys. And every element of the site needed to be on-brand; as a supporter of the arts in the St. Louis area, the RAC website needed to be artfully designed and beautifully implemented.

In addition to the requirements for the community-facing website, it was just as important to make the backend WordPress admin as user-friendly as possible for the RAC staff to update, especially considering the high volume of ongoing content updates.

The Project

We kicked off the project with UX discovery, which included meeting with various stakeholders at RAC, as well as artists, grantees, and board members. From there we developed user personas, then created a sitemap and wireframes that supported the most likely user journeys for those personas.

From there, we moved into the design phase. In partnership with Cannonball Agency, we presented design concepts for RAC to choose from, each of which reflected the brand but with slightly different stylistic choices.

Once we zeroed in on a design, we began the website development. Some of our favorite features on the site are the public art directory and the events calendar. In addition to building out all the new areas of the site, we conducted a site audit to only bring over the best and most relevant content (which was still a lot!).

The Result

A fun and functional site that represents the passion and purpose of the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. Artists, arts organizations, and members of the community can all visit the site and get the information they need. Visit site.