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This annual music festival brightens up Vancouver summers with a unique mix of classical, jazz and world music. When they approached us, their site had an outdated design layered over a complex, custom-built database system—and as an arts-based nonprofit, their budget wouldn’t allow them to start over from scratch. So we rolled up our sleeves and prepared for some spring cleaning.

We tackled the design first, cleaning up the navigation and developing an archiving system so that each year, when the festival ends, the concert and artist info remains available until the following season is launched.

Because the Festival's theme—and colours—change from one year to the next, we developed an ultra-clean look that's flexible enough to accommodate the changes. The home page highlights an ever-rotating selection of vibrant photos taken at festival performances, while the inside pages focus on making it easy to browse the two-week calendar by genre, artist, date, venue, or series.

And to make sure the website works year-round, we set up an easy archiving system that allows them to switch from mid-festival mode to the off-season – and back again – with just a couple of mouse clicks. Now the website is almost entirely managed in-house, cutting down significantly on maintenance headaches.