Nelson Civic Theatre Society
We captured the pulse of film and community, shaping a brand that reflected Nelson’s creative spirit + the transformative magic of cinema.
NYU Skirball
INTRODUCTION
The Most Dangerous Stage in New York, Now Online
NYU Skirball didn’t build its reputation as “New York’s top landing zone for Europe’s most outré avant-garde theater and dance” (Time Out) by playing softball. It’s the downtown stage that books the acts most rooms in New York pass on, run on Baldwin’s line that artists are here to disturb the peace. We came to it straight off NYU Casa Italiana, the Takt-built site that won a Webby. Same university, wildly different animal. The job this time was to drag Skirball’s spirit online without watering it down.
Designed to Act, Built to Explore
Dig into the research and two kinds of visitor show up wanting opposite things. Some know exactly what they’re after and want a ticket in hand before they’ve finished their coffee. Others are just curious, circling the work, waiting for a reason to give up a whole night to it. Most sites quietly pick one of those people and ignore the other. Skirball couldn’t afford to.
So we built the place around both, two modes we call Act and Explore. Ready to act? Tickets, the calendar, and the where-do-I-park stuff are always a step away. Here to explore? The site cracks open into essays, themes, series, and the curator’s reasons a show made the cut. A taxonomy of themes, genres, and series ties it together, so a single performance isn’t a dead end, it’s a trapdoor into the rest of Skirball’s world. Which, let’s be honest, is the best sales pitch the venue’s got.
A Digital Stage With the Same Nerve
Our pals (and crushes) at Pentagram had already built a brand that doesn’t pull its punches. Big type, loud colour, a voice that doesn’t care if you like it. The trouble with brands that good is they tend to go limp the second they hit a template. Not this one, not on our watch. We got it online with the edges still on.
The design plays layout like editorial, not decoration. Event pages know most runs are short, so dates, availability, and next steps stay dead obvious without stepping on the story around the show. Motion and hierarchy earn their keep, steering the eye and keeping the whole thing unmistakably Skirball whether you land on a marquee run or a single essay.
One Journey Across Two Systems
Now the fun part: ticketing. Skirball sells through TNEW on Tessitura, and no, we weren’t about to rebuild that. But pretending the two systems were one would’ve been a lie you could feel in the checkout.
So the site runs on WordPress with a modular component system, and a Tessitura v16 integration quietly syncs event and ticketing data with TNEW in the background. The editorial side and the buying side stay in lockstep even though they live on different platforms, so the jump feels like one trip instead of a border crossing. The modular setup also hands Skirball’s team the keys, letting them spin up pages and reshuffle the site without ringing a developer every time. And accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA) plus mobile-first performance were in from the first wireframe, not spackled on at the end.
It’s live now at nyuskirball.org. Consider the peace disturbed.
