The Neverlands: Immersive Experiences at The Edison & Clifton's
UX STRATEGY / UI DESIGN / WEB DEVELOPMEN
The Neverlands is a home to two of Los Angeles’ most stunning nightlife venues: The Edison and Clifton’s Republic. The client wanted a website that speaks “extraordinary” through a world of fantasy, and promotes the venues, events, and products.
While there is a variety of people coming to Clifton’s and Edison in person and online, they are all seeking the extraordinary—and expect nothing less. The website needed to reflect this level of curiosity, adventure, and imagination.
An incredible amount of time was invested in the storytelling behind the illustrated screens and how users would travel through each of the main venue pages. The correct balance of elements on screen and how the elements behave on-scroll was one of the two greatest challenges we faced.
The second challenge, and perhaps an even greater one, was how to give users a good, clear navigation experience on a website where the client wanted to prioritize imagination and inspiration above all.
We wanted to simplify the site structure as much as possible, with the site being so graphically intense and visually nonconventional. Our main site nav uses the idea of a navigation chart and is represented by a dangling star as a nav icon.
Simple in execution, but again focused on the illustrations.
The project was a large-budget project with an unusually long timeline: more than two years in the making. A lot of time went into directing illustration as well as evolving with the changing needs of the brand.
Even though we usually have a much clearer, strategic and defined process, in this case, we decided to let the artistic nature of the project guide the process in many ways. With the client being extremely creative and artistic themselves, we saw no other way of being able to get the project completed successfully. Sometimes, you have to bend the rules to create something fresh and unexpected.
unique features
Intended to inspire above all, the site provides a glimpse at the experiences inside The Edison and Clifton’s, their events, and includes the ability for restaurant patrons to purchase tickets and buy a select number of unusual products through the website.
We translated the magical and curiosity-driven quality of the physical spaces to the digital experience through the use of custom hand-painted illustrations by Shannon Stamey that we helped art direct—especially keeping in mind how they would be used on screen with parallax effects and mouse-movement.
implementation
We used a custom WordPress installation to power the back end. We also built a lot of other custom features that happen on venue pages such as The Edison, Clifton’s Republic and Pacific Seas as users scroll, making it feel as if you descend into the city, down the tree canopy or into the ocean.
solution
Fans of both The Edison and Clifton’s Republic spaces are thrilled by a digital presence that matches the eccentric nature of these iconic LA venues. The positive feedback from fans has been inspiring and the site has already achieved recognition in the design community - an honorable mention on awwwards.com as well as a Gold Medal for Website Design on Indigo Design Awards!
PROJECT URL:
https://www.theneverlands.com/
CASE STUDY:
https://www.activecolor.com/the-neverlands
