Lumina: Building a nightlife brand

overview

Lumina is a student-led nightlife brand founded at the University of Washington. My friends and I started it after noticing a clear gap in UW’s party culture—events felt disconnected, inconsistent, and lacked a strong visual identity. We wanted to build something different: a space centered around music, dancing, and shared energy.

Since launching, Lumina events have brought together 600+ attendees, growing from small campus gatherings into high-energy nights recognized across the student community.

problem statement

UW had parties, but no cohesive nightlife brand. Events were often one-off, visually unmemorable, and hard to distinguish from one another. As people who genuinely loved dancing and nightlife, we wanted to create a brand that felt intentional, immersive, and instantly recognizable—both online and in physical spaces.

research

I began by studying some of the strongest nightlife brands globally, particularly clubs like High, Pattaya, and Opium. What stood out across all of them was consistency. Each relied on a single, iconic visual element—repeated everywhere from drinkware and lighting to backdrops and digital content.

This insight shaped the core design principle for Lumina:
the brand had to be memorable, minimal, and endlessly repeatable.

logo

The Lumina logo was designed to be intentionally simple—bold enough to stand alone, yet flexible enough to scale across posters, social media, wristbands, projections, and merchandise. The goal wasn’t complexity, but recognizability. If someone saw the symbol once, they should recognize it instantly the next time, no matter the context.

Every branding decision prioritized:

• High contrast and clarity in dark environments

• Easy reproduction across physical and digital formats

• A visual language that felt modern, energetic, and nightlife-forward

website design and developement

The website went through multiple design iterations before reaching its final form. Early versions explored different layouts, navigation structures, and visual densities to balance two competing needs: capturing the high-energy nightlife vibe while still making critical information (date, venue, tickets) immediately accessible.

In Figma, I iterated on:

• Page hierarchy to reduce friction when discovering events

• Typography scale and contrast for readability in low-light environments

• Motion and visual rhythm that mirrored the pace of a live event

• Brand placement to ensure the logo and visual system stayed central without overwhelming the content

Each iteration was tested against how users would realistically interact with the site—often quickly, on their phones, and moments before an event.

Once the design direction was finalized, I transitioned the site into Framer for development. Framer allowed for rapid iteration post-launch, enabling continuous refinement based on real usage and feedback.

Beyond visual development, we built a custom ticketing and registration form directly within Framer. Instead of relying on third-party embeds, I constructed the form using Framer objects and extended its functionality by hard-coding logic using Framer’s code features. This allowed us to:

• Maintain full visual consistency with the Lumina brand

• Customize validation, inputs, and interactions

• Adapt the form quickly for different events and pricing tiers

This approach gave us greater control over both the user experience and the technical flow, while keeping everything within a single platform.

final product