Archtober
The Archtober festival takes place annually from October 1-31, gathering hundreds of architecture and design events from partner institutions across the five boroughs. This project was largely designed by Greater Studio, and my role on the project team at the Center for Architecture required copywriting to help users navigate the main offerings of the festival (Events, Exhibitions, Activities, and Partners), as well as general feedback and testing throughout design and development.
Challenge: The temporal nature of the festival called for a site that could shape shift to meet different needs throughout several phases: leading up to the festival, the festival itself, and the rest of the calendar year. How could we apply a graphic identity throughout these phases while speaking to the design community and general public in a voice that was playful and of the moment?
Approach: We established an evergreen identity that helped bolster a slimmer amount of content throughout the year, as well as a more playful 2021 festival identity that activated users in navigating a much higher volume of events, exhibitions, and activities during the month of October. Previously, there was no evergreen web site and the festival had no digital presence November through September.
This approach extended the relevancy of the festival throughout the year and, when paired with a more frequent email campaign, grew the brand far beyond October.
Year-Round Homepage
The year-round site has a more minimalist graphic identity, and the text on this page needed to be very clear and concise in establishing the purpose of the festival.
2021 Festival Homepage
The 2021 festival homepage required a stronger CTA telling users exactly how to navigate and filter the 100s of events offered during the month of October.
Evergreen Events
The text on this page is minimal, allowing for a high visual impact thanks to the background photo. Here, we remind users of the role of partners in bringing together the programming, and again point to the mission of Archtober in representing NYC’s five boroughs.
Event units on the evergreen site have a strong yet minimal graphic component, with a yellow shadow that appears during hover. Units are flexible to accommodate images when provided.
Archtober Map
I contributed copywriting to market a mobile web app we created as part of the 2021 festival. Messaging here needed to align with the fun-seeking nature of the app, while setting clear expectations for users once the entered the mobile experience, which we wanted to be clear was not a native app that required download.
Partners Page
The creation of an evergreen Partners page was key to propelling the growth of the festival throughout the year. By adding this page to the main navigation, we remind users that the partners are the lifeblood of the festival, and also encourage joining anytime.
Three team members from the Center for Architecture contributed to the creation of this project, with design and development completed by Greater Studio. The main areas I worked are organizing the content, QA and user testing, and UX writing for the menus, landing pages, and navigation of the site, as described above.