Producer & UX Designer
12 weeks
Nonprofit, Arts & Education
Producer & UX Designer – Tiff Cruz
Designer – Luna Wu
Art Director – Aman Gebre
Art Director & Designer – Defne Kaynak
-Client communication and feedback facilitation
-Project scoping and team timeline planning
-Design asset organization and delivery
-UX wireframes and hi-fi layouts
-Homepage and inner page builds in EditorX
-Art direction and visual hierarchy planning
Wix.com / EditorX
Miro
Sketch
CSS
The Children’s Art Carnival (CAC) is a Harlem-based nonprofit offering visual arts education to youth and families across New York City. With a growing program and a clear mission, CAC needed a site that reflected their role as a nurturing, creative space for both young learners and emerging artists. Their outdated site lacked structure, accessibility, and a cohesive narrative that reflected the breadth of their programs and ambitions.
-Built the homepage as a visual anchor to align layout and content structure
-Organized a design system and style guide to unify typography, color, and illustration
-Mapped user flows and prioritized calls-to-action to aid engagement and navigation
-Identified accessibility pain points early (e.g. mobile readability, hover states, site-builder constraints)
We kicked off with client onboarding, value alignment, and research. Moodboards were assembled around CAC’s core traits: Empowering, Creative, Easy, Educational, and Lighthearted. I led early lo-fi sketches and presented two distinct concepts in our initial pitch—each reflecting a different art-forward direction. Through team feedback, we explored typographic choices, illustration styles, and color palettes to strike the right tone for youth and adult users alike.
These early visual exercises weren’t just about aesthetics they laid the foundation for how CAC could communicate its mission, ensure accessibility for all users, and scale its site as new programs and content are added over time.
Harlem School of Arts
The Drawing Center
Beam Center
Children's Museum of Manhattan
Brownsville
Empowering
Creative
Easy
Educational
Lighthearted
With a visual direction approved, we shifted into defining the site’s structure and user experience. Collaborating closely with the client, we mapped out the sitemap and sketched low- to high-fidelity wireframes across all core pages:
Homepage, Events, Workshops, Donate, About, Membership, and Contact. At this stage, design decisions were shaped not just by aesthetics, but by functionality. We evaluated the limitations of EditorX and adjusted layouts accordingly to preserve intent without sacrificing usability. As the homepage matured, we used it as a visual and structural foundation for the rest of the site, aligning typography systems, CTA hierarchy, shape motifs, and hover interactions. We ran multiple rounds of feedback to fine-tune layout spacing, image cropping, and text balance, ensuring each page felt breathable, cohesive, and easy to navigate.
To make the homepage feel welcoming and organized:
-We divided content into folds that reflected CAC’s core values Empowering, Educational, Creative.
-Incorporated hover-based interactions to keep the interface playful without distracting from key content (e.g. shapes that reveal new imagery in the Support Us section).
-Balanced photos and illustrations to reflect both the personality and professionalism of the organization.
-Designed for mobile and desktop flexibility, understanding the range of users accessing the site.
With the homepage direction in place, we applied the same design logic to the rest of the pages, prioritizing usability and maintaining a consistent visual language.
-Homepage: Introduced a modular layout that clearly communicated CAC’s mission, events, and donation asks, with responsive design and hover-based storytelling elements.
-Events Page: Featured clear pathways for RSVP, highlighted instructors and visual previews of what to expect, plus separation for open calls and Salon events.
-Workshops Page: Focused on youth and early-career artists, with strong wayfinding and an emphasis on action (sign up, contact, learn more).
-Membership Page: Created in response to a client request — provided pathways to apply for studio space and connect Harlem-based artists in a shared network.
-Contact Page: Supported CAC’s outreach goals with clear channels to ask questions, get directions, or join the newsletter.
-Donate Page: Prioritized visibility with an above-the-fold CTA, simple structure, and clear explanation of impact.
After the final iteration of the homepage was approved, for the rest of the week we focused on to working on the lofi and hifi designs for the inner pages. This included the Membership, Events, Workshop, Membership, Contact, and Donate.
Created different iterations reflecting how they would work on the site builder EditorX we were using. Figuring out it limitations on how much creative freedom we had.
Key features the client wanted:
-The Events section should come after the Artist Development section.
-Make this section look similar to the
Community Workshop section looks like (the calendar list of upcoming events with a button to RSVP) on the homepage
-This section must include Exhibition Open Call events and The Salon @CAC events.
-Explicitly showcase how they can join, location & date, who is the instructor for the event and include image depicting what they are doing.
On Editor X, there was a different interface that worked for booking. Our challenge was to make the event and booking page make sure they looked in the same design system.
Key features the client wanted:
-Have a similar layout to Events Page
-Explicitly showcase how they can join, location & date and include image depicting what they are doing.
Direction we considered while we focused on the About page. Taken from the Homepage were considered images that have imperfect edges color borders misshapen images and images on hover. We also reused the two column (one side text and other side imagery) to match the homepage layout.
Key features:
-Incorporated imagery like the map of Harlem in the hero image and pictures from early stages of the organization detailing their story.
-Played around with anchor points seen in the second iteration with the hearts but reconsidered that notion when we received feedback that it was too confusing and not read as a clickable point or action button to the viewer.
-List faculty and celebrate their previous alumni.
Contact page main function to support community and answer questions about current events, workshops, teachers and other FAQs.
Other key features included:
-Increase in traffic to their different social media channels
- Address, website and how to find their location on a map
-Create traction for their newsletter
Originally not in the site build, however upon asking the client what was the most important thing they wanted to do to help the community.
They responded that they wanted to establish a membership page to foster a safe space for artist's talent to flourish. Not only did they want to learn more about artist in the area but wanted to help them foster connections and celebrate their work.
Key features:
-Apply for studio space
-Build a list/database of artists in the Harlem community to keep them connected and celebrate their works
We designed a Donation page as an online form since CAC is a nonprofit's website that supporters can use to contribute funds to the organization's mission.
Key features:
-After our first few iterations, we received feedback to place the Donate button should appear on the first fold so that the user can immediately find the action button.
-We ended up using a simple alignment instead of several alignments through so that user will immediately be able to understand what they stand for and how to contribute to the cause.
After reviewing our hi-fi designs, CAC shared feedback that the color palette leaned too childish. They wanted something more mature and versatile something that still felt vibrant but would appeal to both teens and adult artists.We experimented with multiple adjustments, exploring hue, saturation, and tonal range to land on a darker, moodier version of the original palette. While richer, it still felt breathable and true to CAC’s identity.We also tackled asset inconsistencies across their event types. To address this, we combined CAC’s own photo library with carefully curated stock photography. This gave every event and workshop visual representation while preserving cohesion across the site.
In the final stretch, we focused on building out all the inner pages using EditorX. We tested layouts, ensured responsive behavior, and made last-mile tweaks to page hierarchy and text styles.I managed the team’s timeline and handoff process, ensuring all assets were cleanly organized and documented for the client. This included style guides, web files, and documentation for future updates.We wrapped with a polished, functional site that felt welcoming, navigable, and true to CAC’s mission. It’s a platform they can build on for years to come serving both as a resource for the Harlem creative community and a digital reflection of the organization's legacy and growth.
