Theatre Philadelphia turned to I-SITE to design a new website to celebrate and promote professional theatre in the Greater Philadelphia region. Led by a group of local artistic and managing theatre leaders, the organization is best known for its annual Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre.
Key goals for the redesign project included:
- Create a beautiful and bold responsive design
- Deliver improved presentation and search feature for the shows
- Social media integration for Twitter and Facebook
- Development of a more manageable and flexible backend to better suit the organization’s needs
The I-SITE team worked closely with Theatre Philadelphia board member Anne Shuff and Administrative Director Joel Sumner to first review the current site and map out a new architecture, feature set and design direction for the website. It was agreed that the previous site did not take advantage of the wealth of fine photography provided by area theatres that include The Wilma Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Arden Theatre, 1812 Productions among others.
Major consideration in wireframing and design was given to the growing number of theatre lovers looking for information on shows and latest news from the theatre community on their smart phones. The navigation was simplified and new search tools introduced for shows and the Barrymore Awards.
I-SITE proposed building the new website on the Drupal 7 CMS. Theatre Philadelphia already had experience with managing the website on the previous Drupal 6 platform. I-SITE was able to bring its deep experience in building Drupal websites and customized modules for William Penn Foundation, The Painted Bride and Downtown New York among others.
At all stages of design and development key members of the theater community were involved in discussions and evaluations to ensure that the site would be optimized for their needs as well as for the ticket buying public.
I-SITE provided CMS training for key staff and continues to offer ongoing consulting, hosting and support.
The Painted Bride Arts Center turned to the I-SITE team to partner on an innovative community arts and culture project that makes visible the “unspoken” and seemingly invisible archives of cultural memory in Philadelphia’s rich and diverse past. Funded by Pew Charitable Trusts Re-PLACE-ing Philadelphia called upon artists/thinkers Reggie Wilson, Faustin Linyekula, and Marty Pottenger to weave a critical dialogue and conversation within and around their work.
For the online program Painted Bride challenged I-SITE to find innovative ways to report on the artists’ work and also encourage communities and the public to use their smartphones and tablets to share their stories and insights while on the move.
All the site content, whether a bio, video or photograph, is in the form of a field note that is displayed on the home page and can be submitted by the public as well as the artists/thinkers, Free Radicals aka advisors King Britt, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Brenda Dixon Gottschild, and the Painted Bride team. The field notes can be filtered by tags, author keyword and time period therefore creating a rich and interactive archive that will remain online as a resource after the completion of the 18-month project.
The website built on Drupal 7, is fully responsive and uses Isotope and Masonry libraries to sort and filter interactively with the varying media formats and content published on the site. Post launch the I-SITE team continues to support the website with additional content and features.
Pre-school TV channel Sprout turned to I-SITE to create a fun campaign for the 2013 Holiday season that would feature an email and microsite. The goal of the program was to raise awareness of Sprout’s Kindest Kid contest with business partners and increase contest votes.
For the overall campaign, the I-SITE and Sprout team came up with the concept of an illustrated home that would feature photographs of the kindest kids finalists and a call to action to vote for the winner. The website built in HTML5 uses parallax scrolling and features an array of original illustrations by Monica Marziani.
Visitors to the microsite scroll from the front door of the home to the living room fireplace where there is an an invitation to vote for one of the four Kindest Kid finalists. On the journey through the home photographs of the finalists appear along with a number of fun holiday elements. I-SITE also designed and developed an HTML email that links to the microsite.
The campaign was a great success for Sprout and received accolades including being recognized as Best Family Website at the 2014 Internet Advertising Competition Awards.
