A Festival Website for All Seasons
Derby Book Festival has grown into one of the city’s cultural highlights, featuring bestsellers, debut authors and powerful community stories. As the festival expanded, so did its need for a digital platform that could do it all; sell tickets, showcase events, promote its community outreach, and support repeat attendance through a Festival Friends scheme.
We designed a vibrant, image-led website that brings the festival’s energy to life. With clear calls to action and intuitive navigation, it encourages visitors to explore the programme, become members, and attend multiple events. Extensive planning went into wireframing user journeys to help grow audiences year after year, and the result is a platform that serves both literature lovers and the organisation behind the scenes.
What They Say
Celebrating Community Through Stories
Beyond events, Derby Book Festival runs transformative Shared Reading and Writing projects with local communities. To showcase this work, we created dedicated project hubs on the site. Each hub features rich content such as videos, photography, and impact statements, alongside interactive digital versions of the beautiful books we helped design and publish for each new project group.
These projects, often created in partnership with Derby College and young refugees and asylum seekers, are central to the festival’s mission to use storytelling as a force for connection and understanding. The website now honours that mission with space to explore, celebrate and share those powerful voices from within the community.
Commerce Designed for Growth
Ticketing flexibility was key for the Festival. We built a bespoke system that allows DBF to sell tickets directly or redirect customers to external venues, ensuring a seamless user experience. Customers can also buy books and digital products through the site.
We also integrated a Festival Friends subscription model, providing all Festival Friends with early ticket access and account-level control. Admins can manage all users within the CMS, and email marketing tools (via Mailchimp) help keep audiences engaged between festivals. Everything is hosted on a secure, scalable platform ready for continued growth.
