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- July 28, 2025
- News and Announcements
Behind the Redesign: Creating a Website That Truly Serves Seattle’s Design Community
Like any good design story, this one begins with a problem.
Namely, that our previous website was struggling to keep up with who we’ve become. Navigation felt like solving a puzzle, the site went quiet during our off-season, and many visitors left without understanding that Seattle Design Festival is more than a two-week event—we’re a year-round catalyst for design thinking throughout our community. We knew it was time for a change. We needed a digital platform that could match our ambitions: showcasing events, sharing stories, fostering connections, and embodying the inclusive, creative spirit that makes Seattle’s design community so special.
Now, with Festival season just around the corner, we’re thrilled to pull back the curtain and share the journey of how this new site came to life.
Finding the Right Partner
When we began our search for a design partner, we knew we needed more than just technical expertise. We needed someone who understood the unique challenge of designing for designers—a team that could balance aesthetic excellence with practical functionality, and who wouldn’t be intimidated by our community’s discerning eye. We found that partner in People People, a Seattle-based branding and interactive firm with an impressive track record in the architecture and design sector. Since 1998, they’ve been helping organizations tell their stories through thoughtful design, and their portfolio includes over 20 architecture and design firms. But what really sold us wasn’t just their experience—it was their philosophy that great design comes from deep listening and true collaboration.
True to their philosophy, People People didn’t begin with mood boards or design concepts. Instead, they started with questions. Through workshops and conversations with our board members, staff, sponsors, and community members, they sought to understand not just what we wanted, but what our diverse audiences truly needed. One piece of feedback became our guiding principle throughout the project: the reminder that while our site should be inspiring and visually engaging, we couldn’t lose sight of practical, intuitive navigation. This balance between beauty and usability would shape every decision that followed.
Discovering Our North Star and Solving the Seasonal Challenge
During our exploration phase, we looked at cultural institutions and festivals from around the world. We studied how major museums present information, how festivals create excitement, and how nonprofit organizations communicate their missions. Each example taught us something valuable about what we did—and didn’t—want for our own site. The most inspiring discovery was a Danish music hall website that was both visually dynamic and incredibly functional, using color and typography to create energy without relying on distracting animations. It also struck a beautiful balance of highlighting a lively events calendar and artists programs with messaging about the organizational mission and opportunities for year-round engagement.
This discovery was perfectly timed, as we were grappling with one of our biggest challenges: Seattle Design Festival’s seasonal shifts. During festival season, we’re a bustling hub of events, workshops, and installations. The rest of the year, we’re a thoughtful organization fostering design thinking through smaller programs, partnerships, and community initiatives. Our old site wasn’t handling this duality—it was either in full festival mode or it felt uneventful. People People helped us create a flexible system that shifts seamlessly between these modes without confusing visitors. Whether you arrive seeking festival events or year-round programming, the site now guides you intuitively to what you need, adapting its personality to match our seasonal rhythm while maintaining a consistent, welcoming experience throughout the year.
The design process revealed some surprising truths. Despite working in creative fields, our community consistently favored clarity over complexity. When given the choice between cutting-edge interactions and straightforward navigation, we chose the latter. This wasn’t about playing it safe—it was about respecting our users’ time and intentions.
Every major decision was made collaboratively. Rather than People People presenting us with a finished vision, we worked together through each phase. This meant that by the time we saw design concepts, they already incorporated our community’s values and needs. The result feels authentic because it truly emerged from our collective vision.
Building the Backend
Behind every beautiful website is a content management system, and ours needed to work for our small but mighty team. People People built a WordPress-based platform that transformed our daily operations. Tasks that once took an hour now take minutes. Switching between festival and off-season modes is seamless. Adding events, updating content, and sharing stories has become intuitive rather than frustrating. We also made accessibility a non-negotiable priority. Meeting WCAG standards wasn’t about checking boxes—it was about living our values. If we believe design should be inclusive and accessible to everyone, our website needed to demonstrate that commitment.
New agenda/schedule view of the events
New map view of the events
New site wide search feature
More robust festival archives with information and photos of each year
15+ layout options which make updating and adding new pages easy..
New agenda/schedule view of the events
New map view of the events
New site wide search feature
More robust festival archives with information and photos of each year
15+ layout options which make updating and adding new pages easy..
Lessons Learned
Launching a new website is always nerve-wracking, especially when your audience includes some of Seattle’s most talented designers. But the response has been wonderful. Visitors find information faster, engage with our content longer, and better understand our year-round mission. Our team is able to refocus time on what matters most: connecting with our community.
The numbers tell part of the story—significantly reduced bounce rates, increased engagement, faster load times—but the real success is harder to measure. It’s in the emails from community members who discovered programs they didn’t know existed. It’s in the ease with which our team can now share the amazing work happening in Seattle’s design community. And it’s finally having a digital home that feels as vibrant and welcoming as our physical events. This journey taught us valuable lessons that we hope might help others facing similar challenges:
Trust your community’s wisdom.
Our stakeholders consistently pointed us toward simplicity and functionality. Listening to them, rather than trying to impress them, led to better outcomes.
Choose partners who embrace collaboration.
People People never positioned themselves as the experts who would solve our problems. Instead, they facilitated a process that drew out our own expertise and insights.
Have courage in restraint.
In a world of endless digital possibilities, choosing not to do something can be as powerful as choosing to do it. Every feature we didn’t add made the ones we kept more impactful.
Looking Ahead
Our new website isn’t just a tool or a platform—it’s a reflection of who we are and who we aspire to be. It demonstrates that accessible, user-centered design doesn’t mean sacrificing creativity. It proves that a website can be both beautiful and functional, inspiring and practical, cutting-edge and inclusive.
As we head into another exciting festival season, we’re grateful to have a digital home that truly serves our community. We’re thankful to People People for their partnership, expertise, and patience in bringing this vision to life. Most of all, we’re excited to continue growing and evolving with all of you. This website belongs to all of us—the designers, architects, artists, and creative thinkers who make Seattle’s design community so special. We hope you find it as inspiring to use as we found it to create. See you at the Festival!
Seattle Design Festival is a 501(c)3 charitable organization dedicated to promoting public dialogue and community engagement about design in urban life. Established in 2011 as a strategic initiative of AIA Seattle, we work year-round to unleash design thinking in everyone.
People People is a Seattle-based branding and interactive firm specializing in strategic design for cultural institutions, nonprofits, and architecture firms. Visit us on the web to learn more.