Case Study · 02
Festival of Lights
A cinematic, mobile-first destination for Southern California's largest holiday tradition — engineered for seasonal traffic spikes and 500,000+ annual visitors.
12.4K
Peak Concurrent Users
Zero downtime during 2024 switch-on
78%
Mobile Traffic Share
Redesigned mobile-first
1.4s
Avg. Load Time (LCP)
Down from 4.8s
100
Lighthouse Accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA verified
§ Challenge
The problem
The Festival of Lights draws nearly half a million visitors to downtown Riverside each holiday season. The previous microsite couldn't handle traffic surges, buried key information about parking, closures and events, and offered no sense of the festival's atmosphere. We needed to build a destination that felt like the festival itself — warm, illuminated, effortless — while staying rock-solid under load.
§ Approach
What we did
We rebuilt the experience around a single question: what does a visitor need to know in the next five minutes? Parking, closures, tonight's entertainment, family activities. Everything else moved below the fold. The visual language borrowed from the switch-on ceremony — points of warm light against deep winter blue — and we treated every animation as a candle rather than a firework.
§ Process
From discovery to launch.
- 01
Discovery
Stakeholder workshops with Parks & Rec, Public Works, downtown merchants.
- 02
Content strategy
Prioritized visitor tasks: park, arrive, enjoy, share.
- 03
Load modeling
Simulated switch-on night with 3× 2023 peak traffic.
- 04
Accessibility audit
Live user testing with screen-reader participants.
- 05
Handoff
Documented Drupal component library for city staff.
§ Stack
Built with
- Drupal 10
- PHP 8.2
- Cloudflare CDN
- Redis
- Twig
- Vanilla JS
- CSS Grid
§ Accessibility
Built for everyone.
Every animated light respects prefers-reduced-motion. All imagery carries descriptive alt text. Interactive elements are keyboard-first and meet WCAG 2.1 AA color contrast against the deep winter background.