For the past 30 years, SF/Arts has sat at the center of the arts & culture communities of San Francisco as the premiere destination for cultural events listings. As a magazine bundled with the New York Times, their curated list of arts & culture events has served as the conduit for keeping Bay Area residents and the arts intertwined. It’s a relationship that has helped keep San Francisco uniquely San Francisco. In an effort to support a wider readership and more arts organizations, SF/Arts reached out to Propane to translate their print media into a fully digital experience.
OUR WORK | Community & Retention
A Platform for SF’s Premiere Arts Events Magazine
- Build Loyalty
- SF/Arts
- The Ask
- Grow SFArts and its communities through the power of digital distribution.
Build Loyalty
Highlights
- Expanded Brand Identity
- Responsive Web Application
- Contentful CMS with Editorial Roles
- Content Submission & Approval Experience
- Build Loyalty
- SF/Arts
- The Challenge
- Expand Audiences. Expand the Brand. Streamline Content Publishing.
When it came to their digital footprint, SF/Arts.org had to start from scratch. Their original site experience was 20 years old, built on top of a custom CMS, and a time-intensive process to manage publishing and updates. At the same time, the user experience contained a lot of anti-patterns thus decreasing usability. And finally its visual design did not family into its print publication look and feel.
Through strategy and creative design Propane embraced the historical brand perception of refined, cultural arts meets San Francisco’s avant garde communities, creating a look and feel that distinctly showcases the edge of the SF/Arts communities while hitting on timeless homages to arts & cultural institutions. It’s a place that feels like home to both the performance artist installation at the corner of 18th & Castro as well as the Legion of Honor Museum.
Propane’s user experience team did a deep dive into modern event experiences -- both the user and content publishing sides. Through mobile-first & responsive best practices, as well as established design languages & patterns, the experience was refined to make it as easy for arts organizations to submit content to be published as it is for visitors to discover content. Speaking of content discovery, robust content taxonomies and easy-to-use filtering make finding events human and useful.
- Build Loyalty
- SF/Arts
- The Results
- A Dressed Up and Ready for a Night Out Events Publishing Platform.
Their responsiveness was noteworthy. Along with being accommodating and creative, the entire team was transparent during the engagement.
SF Arts
The vibrant arts & culture communities of San Francisco now have a centralized events platform that can serve as the premier source-of-truth for everything from museum exhibits, performances, and even class offerings. Organizations can walk-up, create profiles, and submit events for publishing. The SF/Arts team can curate, organize, and publish events to syndicated lists for categories and experiences types -- allowing for curators to make a name for their category and themselves. And best of all San Francisco & the Bay Area can discover, benefit from, and join the arts & culture communities that make their cities great.
