Challenge
Lookingglass Theatre Company is one of Chicago's most inventive ensembles: Tony Award-winning, known for physical, visually daring original work, and co-founded in 1988 by a group of Northwestern graduates that included David Schwimmer, the actor the world knows as Ross from Friends. Its website wasn't telling that story. Productions, education, membership and rentals had grown into a sprawl of pages with no shared structure.
Solution
A complete redesign and rebuild, from UX strategy through launch, working with co-founder David Schwimmer and the Lookingglass team. We rebuilt the content architecture around the eight sections of the company and designed a full-screen navigation that makes the whole organization legible in one view. Production photography carries the pages. Big type does the talking.
Approach
Sitemap and content architecture first, visuals second. Nearly thirty templates were wireframed against real content, then designed for desktop and mobile in parallel, with AI-assisted tooling speeding up the content audit and layout exploration. Development shipped a custom WordPress theme with structured content for plays, seasons and team, integrated with the theatre's Spektrix box office for tickets, subscriptions and donations.
Results
Lookingglass launched in early 2026 on a single platform that its own team runs. Every production, program and way to give lives on one design system, and the site finally looks like the theatre. That was the point.
