Santa Teresa: The unapologetic suburban festival
SERVICES
UX/UI
Development
In 2017, music and branding nerds came together to create a new, alternative music festival featuring local and international artists. With indoor, outdoor and pop-up stages, the festival offers festival-goers a fresh and eclectic program. But what sets it apart from other festivals? It takes place in the suburbs, in a little town north of Montreal called Sainte-Thérèse. Or Santa Teresa!
From the start, the festival relied on a strong and uninhibited brand rooted in bold colours and funny illustrations of suburban life to help demonstrate its distinct personality. After two years of digital gatherings, the new visual and digital platform had to bring a long-awaited message to life: Santa Teresa is back, for real for real.
Every good party needs balloons
Since we were celebrating the return to “normal,” the site had to feel festive. And nothing is more festive than balloon-style typography. But we didn’t stop there. We wanted the text to be playful, so we made it react to movement, just like real balloons would, as the user moves their cursor and we added the sound effect of a balloon deflating that is activated when the user clicks on the text. Surprise!
Suburban icons coming to life
The suburbs are populated with various characters, and we wanted to capture their essence and bring them to life on the festival website. That’s why the header of every page features a different character that is animated in a quick photographic loop. To add another element of surprise, this loop only activates after a few seconds on a mobile device or with the cursor’s movement on a desktop.
A stage for everyone
Santa Teresa aims to help people discover up-and-coming artists, which is why we created a page for each of them. With a simple biography specifically tailored to the festival, links to their social media accounts and a showcase of their most recent music videos, we made sure everyone was properly introduced before the start of the event.
Guiding users on their journey
The shows take place all around charming Sainte-Thérèse, and they are conveniently grouped in themes to help festival-goers decide what to see. From holy shows that take place in a church to cabaret shows held in smaller venues late into the night, there is something for everyone. The event calendar is segmented not only by date and location but also by theme, so that everyone can easily find the type of show that’ll make them happy. And, of course, they can grab their tickets anywhere along the way.
A video battle for emerging talent
To further its goal of being a jumping-off point for new talent, the festival hosts an annual music video battle. For the Clip Champ Contest, 10 up-and-coming new artists are hand-picked by the organization and asked to create an original music video for the occasion. In the Contest section of the website, users can watch the videos and vote for their favourite one to decide who will take home the crown and a grand prize of $5,000 cash.
In the name of the suburbs, amen
As a festival with a strong identity, it was important for us that Santa Teresa’s new platform perfectly reflect its identity. That’s why we made sure every detail, from typography to sound and content to animations, immersed users as much as possible in the suburban craziness that is the Santa Teresa Festival.
Results
- We overcame the negative impact of the pandemic and brought website traffic back to where it was in 2019.
- The average time spent on the website increased by more than 30 seconds to reach an average of 1 minute and 19 seconds per visit.