Portfolio: Case Studies

First Night Austin Screenshot First Night Austin
Austin, TX

First Night Austin is a public celebration of the arts, as well as a family-friendly, affordable, and alcohol free New Year's Eve festival. The site was built as part of AIR Interactive where it won People's Choice and Second Place awards. VoxGroup collaborated with Go9Media to merge attractive design with accessibility - producing a site that excels as both.

Challenge

First Night was a familiar concept and successful event in many other cities across the United States. This event was going to be held for the first time in Austin, Texas. First Night Austin's team did not have a web site and because it was going to be the inaugural event, no photographs were available from past years. The challenge was to come up with a site that could educate Austin about what First Night was all about, increase the "buzz" for the upcoming event, and keep the site simple enough so that everyone - from the artist to the sponsors - could find what they needed.

Solution

Go9Media and VoxGroup teamed together to build FirstNightAustin.org as part of the AIR Interactive Rally, held in conjunction with SXSW. First Night Austin wanted a site that was exciting, colorful and a tool that could promote the upcoming event. The site did all this and more - incorporating a clean palette and sophisticated, yet simple, design with solid accessibility and usability techniques. Images were created using the familiar backdrops of downtown Austin with outlines of figures suggesting what the upcoming event would bring. A css based layout, clean code and accessibility built in at every level ensured that the widest possible audience would get to enjoy FirstNightAustin.org.

Result

FirstNightAustin.org has been a success on many levels. The site is an active tool in reaching the artists of Austin and Central Texas - giving information on proposals and venues. The site's clean code and accessible structure enable superior search engine optimization as well as increasing the audience for the event - resulting in tens of thousands of hits each month.