Published On: May 5th, 2020
Lux Lounge is a Rochester staple, there’s no question about that. It is also one of the most unique bars you’ll find, with a devotion to the weird and a policy of accepting everyone, no matter how they look, act, or what they believe. Lux is also known for its connection to the arts, which is no surprise given their creative approach to their own business.
In 2014, Lux ownership approached me with he challenge of upgrading their old website which had been created by another designer. The goal was to build on the existing website, which was purely static and displayed only basic information about the bar, into a dynamic website with constantly updated event listings (Lux hosts a special event nearly every night), up to date specials, photo galleries, and a live music section to highlight the acts that regularly perform.
Events information was expected to be the primary reason for more visitors coming to the Lux website, so they needed to be well constructed and prominent throughout. Event listings were displayed on the website's homepage (with a separate section devoted specifically to live music events), on a dedicated events listing page (able to be filtered by type), and each event was provided its own page. Events were included as part of the WordPress blog post hierarchy, which made for easy categorization and management.
Lux ownership was happy with their previous website, but realized it needed to be grown to facilitate their needs. Therefore, when designing the site, it was my job to create a custom WordPress theme that allowed for that functionality, but also closely mimicked the look of the original site - a look that closely reflects the mood and tenor of Lux.
In addition to myself, an event promoter working with Lux was to have access to the website so he could also manage event listings. Knowing that he only had a very basic knowledge of WordPress, this meant that managing listings on the back-end should be made as simple as possible. Customizing the events manager and restricting their permissions so they could only access the parts of the admin they needed helped simplify things, but I also made sure to work closely with this individual so that they felt comfortable with the process.
Just as many of Lux's social media marketing efforts referred fans to the website, it was important that people visiting the website were also made aware of Lux's very active social media community. Therefore, on a majority of Event listings, a link to the Facebook event page was included. This drove visitors to Facebook where Lux's social media marketing and active follower community would capture their attention longer-term.
Knowing that the client would be out of town at various points throughout the project, I made plans to present site prototypes virtually. This included the creation of a screencast video featuring a high-fidelity prototype I built to illustrate the website design, demonstrate interactivity, and showcase the content I had created. This video was provided to the client via a shared Dropbox, allowing them to see the site in action and provide feedback for the final round of edits.
Events and live music take place at Lux on a daily basis, therefore, an event calendar displaying the next 7 events (to cover the upcoming week) was displayed on the homepage. Event listing pages were also created, and a live music section was created to display band information and concert event listings.
Every month, Lux hosts an entertaining drag show called "What the Frock?!". Using a custom design, the What the Frock?! page explains the event, displays photos (and images of the amazing posters used to promote each iteration), and provides information on the next Frock.
To display daily specials on the homepage in a creative way, two "characters" were positioned at the bottom left corner of the page. Every day, these two characters would display speech bubbles with comments about that day's specials. This featured was written with Javascript.
Over the years, Lux has become known for their promotional posters. These posters are funny, weird, and overall, very unique and we wanted to feature them on the website. In addition to these posters, photo galleries provided an opportunity to display moments captured during events and artwork that has donned the Lux walls.