Design Process
This project pushed me into unfamiliar territory on purpose. I came in as the designer, but I also had to become the developer, the content strategist, and the brand manager, all without prior WordPress experience.
The biggest lesson was learning to hold the design vision firmly while staying flexible on implementation details. Elementor Pro doesn't always give you pixel-perfect control, and I had to make judgment calls about where to compromise and where to push harder. In most cases, getting the hierarchy and spacing right mattered more than matching the Figma file exactly.
I'm also proud of the fact that I built a real system, not just a pretty site. The Style Guide, the taxonomy structure, and the video page templates are all things the team can maintain and grow without starting over. That's the part that feels like genuine product thinking, not just visual design.
If I were to expand this project, I'd prioritize:
User research with defined personas (local artist vs. casual listener vs. promoter)
A dedicated events calendar page with filtering by venue or genre
Deeper use of the existing Google Analytics setup to define content performance benchmarks and inform editorial direction
The Central Valley has a rich and active music community, but very little dedicated media coverage. Most artists, promoters, and fans rely on scattered social media posts to find out what's happening locally. Setlist Media was founded to fill that gap, but a publication without a strong design foundation wouldn't earn the credibility the community deserved.
When I joined as a co-founder, the site was a basic Hostinger template. It had no defined visual identity, no content hierarchy, and no design system. The structure didn't reflect the music blog experience the team envisioned, and it wasn't built to scale as content grew.
The core challenge was threefold:
Build a brand identity from loose guidelines that felt authentic to the local music scene
Design a content-forward site architecture that could support multiple content types (editorial, video, gallery)
Implement the design myself in WordPress with no prior Elementor Pro experience
Research & Discovery
What I learned before designing
