Event-Microsite for ‘Classic Open Air’
The ‘Classic Open Air’ festival celebrates classical music and aims to make it accessible to a broad audience. This project’s goal was to create a website that reflects the event’s exciting spirit and makes it easy to purchase tickets.
Role
Solo-Student Project for IRONHACK (Quantitative Research, Rebranding, Interface Design & Animation)
Background
This project was part of my IRONHACK UX/UI course. The prompt was to design an event microsite within one week with a focus mainly on UI Design, complex prototyping and animation.
Understanding the Festival and the Audience
Every summer, the historic Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin hosts the ‘Classic Open Air’ Festival, a five-day event that features a variety of classical music styles supported by light shows and fireworks. Typically, classical music is enjoyed mostly by an older demographic (as seen in the chart), however, the ‘Classic Open Air’ Festival aims to make it more appealing to a general audience by inviting well-known pop artists to perform alongside the orchestra. As a result, 70% of visitors do not usually attend classical music events (according to the ‘Classic Open Air’ website).
Two large groups of festival visitors might be reflected in these two personas: 52-year old Sabine, who is a returning visitor and 34-year old Mario who is visiting the festival for the first time.
Status Quo of the Website and Objectives
The festival celebrates classical music and makes it more accessible to a wide audience. The current website does not reflect the excitement of the event. A short analysis reveals an outdated, non-responsive design, confusing navigation and difficult-to-access ticket-purchasing.
To rework the website, these are the most important objectives:
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Create a design that visually reflects the excitement of the event and the magic of classical music.
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Make ticket purchasing more prominent and accessible.
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Bring the website up to modern design standards, remove unnecessary features and information, and make it accessible, easy to navigate, and enjoyable to visit.
Most of the advertising and ticket purchasing is currently happening offline. By creating a better digital presence, the festival can cater to the needs of every demographic in its target group.
A new Visual Identity
The design of the brand should reflect the festival itself. It should be elegant and timeless while also conveying the emotions that music evokes.
Colour palettes of rich gold and salmon accents and dark base colours resemble the ambience of stage lights and fireworks. The well-readable Libre Franklin for paragraphs mixes harmoniously with the elegant, timeless serif font Borgia Pro for display titles.
The new logo is recognizable, well readable, and scalable while speaking a language of elegance. The design uses the high-contrast transitional typeface DM Serif (Display), which is bold yet well balanced. It has a classical yet modern feel to it, which makes it a great fit for a classical music event.
Fulfilling User Needs
On the festival’s landing page, visitors are mainly looking for festival program information. While the website also offers touchpoints to buy tickets, it might not be the user’s primary goal. Visitors of the ‘Classic Open Air’ Festival are most comfortable buying tickets at their local theatre box office or an established online ticket reseller, such as eventim. The new website contains not only the program for the 5-day event but also any other information visitors might need, from accessibility to accommodations and transport.
The design should spark excitement and inspire users to attend the event. Therefore the user flow is more explorative.
Disclaimer
This student design project created by me, which includes the redesign of the brand and website for ‘Classic Open Air’, is purely for educational purposes and does not imply any endorsement or association with the actual brand. I have no ownership or legal rights to the original brand or its assets.
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