Website Design for NWTheatre.org

January 15, 2024

Along with Chase Anderson (Other Voices Calendar), I designed NWTheatre.org, a website dedicated to arts coverage and criticism of Seattle-area arts and performance that is still operating today. Built on the ColorMag theme, the site is designed to be functional, first and foremost. We found opportunities to make it engaging by focusing on accessibility and clear UX design, using the Time.ly All-in-One Event Calendar, and featuring images provided by local arts organizations and the beautiful imagery of Unsplash.

Project Role: Project Manager, Web Designer
What I Learned: Client Consultation, Web Design, Site Maintenance
Tools Used: WordPress, PHP, CSS, Illustrator, Canva

Background

In 2018, I was hanging out a local theatre bar and mentioned to a friend that I had come upon a new theatre calendar called Other Voices, which focused on featuring underrepresented voices in our community. They admitted to running the calendar, and we immediately started brainstorming on how we would develop a new website for theatre criticism in Seattle.

Early brainstorms for NWTheatre.org

The person now behind NW Theatre, Chase Anderson, started out knowing very little about websites, but he wanted to learn how to maintain nwtheatre.org without regular input from me, and now he is independently running the site. My goal then became to setup and easy and affordable framework that he could take full control over. I set him up with a custom WordPress installation hosted on Dreamhost, and found unique ways to customize the ColorMag theme with minimal additional PHP and CSS.

What We Created

Since its launch, NW Theatre has stuck to its roots while expanding its scope in 2024, and it now features the following sections:

Performance Arts Calendar filterable by region and financial accessibility
Theatre Criticism by local art critics and performers
Accessibility Guides about theatre’s COVID policies and venue access
Book Reviews and author events at local bookstores

There’s also ample opportunity for local organizations to submit ongoing ads to the existing ad space available in ColorMag, which Chase also incorporates into a regular newsletter.