A ground-up website designed as a digital extension of the organization's mission, supporting cultural storytelling, registration, payments, and donations.
View website ↗Ife Cultural Arts Center is a hub for African and African Diaspora arts, education, and cultural preservation. I served as the sole designer and developer on a website built from the ground up to support their programming, registration, and donations.
This site needed to do more than share information. It had to function as a digital extension of the organization's mission, reflecting its cultural identity while also handling practical needs like event promotion, registration, online payments, and community sign-ups. Because the project started from nothing, every part of the experience had to be intentionally designed.
I incorporated hand-drawn African-inspired patterns throughout the site to create a visual language rooted in the organization's heritage, used strategically so it added distinction without overwhelming the content. I built the site around visual storytelling, weaving photography and video from real events and performances throughout, and added custom forms and secure payment infrastructure so visitors could register for programs, buy tickets, and donate directly.
Hand-drawn patterns used with intention and restraint.
Real photography and video from programs and performances.
Custom forms, payments, registration, and donations.
I handled the strategy, information architecture, UX and UI design, and front-end development myself. That included designing the cultural visual elements, integrating photo and video content, building registration and newsletter sign-up systems, setting up online payments, and optimizing every flow, especially event discovery, registration, and payment, for mobile.
Programs · Performances · Community
The organization moved from limited digital infrastructure and manual registration to a unified online presence with streamlined registration workflows and online payment capability. Photography and video gave the programming a way to be seen and felt, not just read about, and the site opened up new ways for the community to engage. On social, the account gained 100 new followers in under 30 days, and video content was averaging 50 likes each.
For cultural organizations, a website is more than a marketing tool, it's an extension of the mission itself. This project meant balancing function with cultural storytelling so visitors could register and give while still feeling the spirit of the organization online.
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