Visual Design / UI / UX
Virginia ArtFactory
Virginia ArtFactory
Make Art, See Art, Be Art
- Client: Virginia ArtFactory
- Creative Director: Shane Santiago, Bravely
- Role: Visual Design, UI/UX, Front-end
- Front/Back-end Dev: Jeff Will
The Center for the Arts is a local, non-profit arts center located in Manassas, VA that serves the community by offering art, drama and dance instruction; theatrical productions, art exhibits; and a variety of programs for all ages. The Center for the Arts aims to unite the greater Manassas/Prince William County community while providing a safe haven for people of all ages to explore the arts.
As part of a huge re-branding and website redesign effort, Bravely was tapped by the Center for the Arts (CFA) at the Candy Factory for an overhaul of how they communicated their brand both strategically and visually. In close partnership, Bravely developed a new name for the organization, soon-to-be known as the ARTfactory, when they publicly launch in spring 2020. Bravely’s goal was to create a whimsical brand that communicated the wide-ranging and diverse offerings from art or dance classes to ticketed theater shows. Additionally, the organization hoped to modernize their brand to appeal to the new generation of art-seekers and become a pillar of the creative community for young and old.
Through interviews and discussions, we conducted a brand archetype exercise in which the specific characteristics of the CFA brand were mapped to one of twelve identities. Based on the present and desired brand personality, the archetype that best identifies CFA is “The Creator,” with elements of ‘The Caregiver‘ and ‘The Innocent.‘ Expressive, original, and imaginative, but very optimistic, compassionate, nurturing and caring: “We’re helping raise kids (enrich the kids in all of us) and change lives as much as we’re teaching art.”
The goal in creating a new logo was to create something with meaning and enduring value (art, people, and community). Conducting a brand archetype analysis determined the traits as creative, imaginative, artistic, inventive, non-conformist — similar to creative brands; Crayola, (Old School) Lego, Disney, Pinterest, Etsy, and Adobe. Sketches were developed to portray the new look and feel of the non-profit.
CFA’s existing website was antiquated and lacked a digital focus, so Bravely needed to right the ship because much of the traffic would be directed to the site for calendar of events, ticket sales, and workshops. We would design mobile, tablet, and desktop verions of the site with WordPress as the publishing tool for the content management system. Bravely built custom templates for the nonprofit to use in modifying the content. The team also leveraged various plugins to enhance the experience. To assist Jeff in development, a UI kit (pattern library) was developed to be able to compile any additional/outlier templates.
As Jeff and I wrapped up front-end styles for the template development and integrated the CMS, the team set up a training to help the CFA staff understand how to be hands-on with the site and migrate the content for the site. Jeff, Shane, and myself QA’d to ensure the site was rendering properly.
