Interlochen Center For The Arts Case Study

Showcasing a Creative Home for Emerging Artists

Solutions

Interlochen Center For The Arts Case Study

The Challenge

Interlochen Center for the Arts is one of the nation’s premier boarding arts high schools and summer arts camps. But website usability tests showed visitors felt frustrated and uninspired. The website was hard to navigate, and the pages did little to highlight the center’s unique creative energy and close-knit community. Interlochen needed a new web strategy to tell its complete story.

HERE'S HOW.

Interlochen Center For The Arts Case Study

The Strategy

The Carnegie web team conducted in-person discovery sessions and a site audit to understand the Interlochen spirit and learn the needs of the center. We redesigned the information architecture of Interlochen’s new homepage to help with usability. Carnegie also designed program finders to help prospective students and parents find the specific offerings they were looking for. We produced dynamic videos to help tell the Interlochen story from the student perspective. All the while, we made sure that the entire website was accessible to other audiences, such as concertgoers, benefactors, and alumni.

DISCOVERY & STRATEGY
User Research
Experience Maps
Content Strategy
WEB DESIGN
User Experience Design & Accessibility
Branding & Creative Direction
Design System
WEB DEVELOPMENT
Front-End Development
Program Finder
Technology Services
Interlochen Center For The Arts Case Study

The Results.

Usability scores after launch have also shown that visitors love the immersive homepage and its storytelling elements. Parents and students said the new website navigation made it easier to find relevant program information. Even though the site was launched roughly only six months ago, there has been a marked increase in organic new users this year versus last year. The Camp and Academy program pages saw a significant increase in page views, even considering the effects of the pandemic.

43%

INCREASE IN ORGANIC NEW USERS

36%

ACADEMY PAGE TRAFFIC INCREASE

23%

CAMP PAGE TRAFFIC INCREASE

Interlochen Center For The Arts Case Study

Making Your Institution Come Alive

At Carnegie, we believe your website needs to be an extension of your physical space. So our team members visited the beautiful Michigan campus to experience the Interlochen campus for themselves. Inspired by the students’ bold creativity and passions, we created dynamic images, videos and wireframing to showcase the ceter. From the beginning, we wanted to immerse the visitor in the Interlochen experience and make them want to belong. Second, the website did little to highlight Interlochen’s unique creative energy and close-knit community. The lack of dynamic photos and videos meant visitors could not immerse themselves in this environment. Finally, the website did not showcase Interlochen’s beautiful campus, which inspires students and faculty daily.

"Interlochen is full of joy, discovery, and a deeply-held belief that by exploring their creativity, young people learn to trust themselves. Regardless of the path ultimately pursued, developing creative confidence helps you learn to solve problems, navigate choices, and build successful, productive relationships. Nurturing creativity hones a core strength for us as humans, which our new site now conveys.” Katharine Laidlaw
Vice President of Strategic Communications & Engagement
Interlochen Center for the Arts

Information Architecture

Interlochen’s homepage not only needed to be updated—it needed to be reorganized. Previously, it was easy for visitors to get lost or siloed into a program that did not meet their needs. But the new information architecture anchored to Interlochen’s arts areas rather than its organizational structure. This meant the center could tailor its messaging to visitors based on their area of interest. Visitors could slow down to understand the richness of the arts offerings before they hit a specific program page.

Accessibility

While prospective parents and students needed an upgraded homepage, other visitors to Interlochen’s website needed a refreshed website as well. Concertgoers, benefactors, and alumni also wanted to continue to feel connected to this community that had transformed their lives. So the Carnegie web team worked to ensure the website was accessible and user-friendly for all audiences. We tested typography and created white space so all the information would be very easy to read.

Visual Design

Interlochen had a new brand strategy and vibrant new visual identity. So Carnegie’s web team went to work to showcase the center as a destination for young artists and art lovers. Using Interlochen’s brand guide, they brought youthfulness, playfulness, and creativity to the site. They brought grace notes to every page on the website so each section felt distinctly Interlochen. Using these flourishes and elements of animation, Carnegie’s web team brought the brand to life.

BRAND IDENTITY

first-photo

VIDEO + PHOTO CREATIVE PRODUCTION

To further showcase Interlochen as a home for emerging artists, the website needed dynamic videos to immerse visitors in the center’s creative environment and compelling student testimonies to inspire students to see themselves there. “A key aspect of what we like to do is tell the story from the student perspective,” Ben Bilow, Creative Director, said. “These are young kids, and we want them to tell their story. We took what we know about telling college student stories and found a way to do it in an appropriate way for high school-aged students.” Because of the pandemic, our team could not be on campus to direct videos or photography sessions. But Bilow and Director of Web Strategy Shannon Lanus gave creative direction, and the Interlochen team worked with three separate vendors to produce dozens of sizzle reels and student testimonials to tell the Interlochen story through multiple perspectives and every art discipline.

 

first-photo

DESIGN SYSTEM

DESIGN SYSTEM

THE BEAT NEWS + EVENTS HUB

THE BEAT NEWS + EVENTS HUB

MENU

MENU

STUDENT STORIES

STUDENT STORIES

Future Growth

Finally, the creative and web teams ensured Interlochen’s website could continue to expand as needed. As the center grows, there will be new offerings and programs that Interlochen needs to showcase to the world. 

“We look carefully at institution brands and make sure that they’re going to work and try to anticipate how the site’s going to evolve,” Ben Bilow said. “So we designed this from the beginning to be very modular and extremely accessible so that it could continue to evolve with the institution.”

Through the website’s modular structure, Interlochen can continue sharing its story and immersing visitors into this creative world. 

VISIT SITE

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