Project: Brand the new digital program book product, InsideGuide. Design and build event programs for partners during the product’s inaugural season.
Client: InstantEncore
Role: Brand Designer, Graphic Designer, Creative Consultant, Front-End Developer
Overview: InstantEncore’s mission is to help arts and cultural organizations thrive by creating first-class experiences that engage patrons and deliver more value for the organization. Their products have included: Appscension — a mobile app platform for organizations to manage unique and convenient opportunities for patrons directly on their phones; LiveNote — an at-the-venue mobile experience designed to accompany live performances, made in partnership with the Philadelphia Orchestra; and InsideGuide — a brand new, flexible, and intuitive mobile alternative to printed program books.
Problem: The digital program book product was built, sleek, and very robust. I assisted in the branding of the product as InsideGuide, and the Marketing Team successfully showcased the new interface and functionality to a number of organizations who immediately signed up for the trial round of product usage. Partners were excited to use the platform, but there was only one problem — they couldnt access it. There was no Content Management System (CMS) in place.
Coming off the pandemic, having key organizations interested in providing their patrons with mobile programs was not only beneficial to them and their members in terms of reducing touch points, it was also essential to InstantEncore who relied on valuable feedback and testing to perfect the product.
Partner organizations had no way of creating, let alone managing, their own programs, and the Fall season was upon us. My background in both visual design, computer programming, and arts programming made me uniquely qualified to step in and help. I worked with InstantEncore’s Development Team to produce all the InsideGuide programs for upcoming events for the clients that had signed up to be part of the product’s launch.
Solution: Identify the schedule of events for all launch partners. Set up a cadence for producing programs for each upcoming event. Design and code the programs from scratch using JSON (Javascipt) directly within GitHub to then publish online for use by patrons at each event.
Designing From the Ground Up
Without an interface for the CMS, I worked directly in the code to style and create pages for all the digital programs. I ended up as an important bridge for the developers of the product, the partners using the product, and the marketing team trying to bring the product to the market.
Working within Brands
Each organization not only had different needs, but different brand guidelines. I catered to the styles and direction of each partner I was working with, edited logos, colors, and images, as well as created header banners, icons, and any other asset that was needed to both reflect their brand and fit within the parameters of the system.
Working Smarter AND Harder
In order to meet demand for the partners on board, working quickly wouldn’t be enough. I needed efficiency in communication and workflow to speed up creation and approval process of each program in time for each event.
I wrote functions in Google Sheets to help auto-generate the code for page elements that could be templatized, something that was also public-facing when I needed to filter the assets and input from others on my team. In addition, I brought on another freelance developer and trained them on the system to help me with the workload.
Flexibility within this timeframe was a critical element to maintain without sacrificing quality, since we were essentially creating case studies for how the product should be developed and marketed. Along with the organizations, we were discovering all the possibilities of what we could do now that we could never do previously with printed programs. Simple things like providing links and sponsors were just the start. We could now change things at the last minute — or even LIVE — in an instant if there was something that came up like a casting change.
