The Local Lab Co.
Services:
Website Design, CMS Architecture
Year:
2026
Industry:
Arts & Culture, Nonprofit
Live Site:
The Local Lab Co. is a Chicago-based theater collective built on a simple idea: with a room full of the right people, given space and trust, can make work no institution could manufacture. Founded by local actors, writers, and directors tired of watching commercial theater gatekeep "legitimacy," the Lab was built so makers can gather, collaborate, and trade skills outside that system. At the start of this project, the collective had outgrown the tools holding it together. By the end, they had a real home online, that they could be proud of, and built to run the organization day to day.
The Challenge
Previously, the Lab's growth and outreach ran almost entirely on Instagram and a Linktree. Instagram was the marketing hub. The Linktree collected everything else: donation links, Google Forms for newsletter and member sign-ups. Payments came in through whatever platform a visitor happened to use, CashApp, Venmo, PayPal, or Eventbrite, with no single record of who had paid for what. The collective's founder was the single point of contact; to the extent that there was a system, it was to run everything from his inbox.
The biggest challenge: none of it was built to scale. Every new member, every event, every donation added more manual work for an admin team that was already stretched thin, with no shared system tying any of it together.
We set out to change that...
The Approach
The build started from a lightweight Next.js and Sanity CMS foundation; stripped down and reshaped to fit the collective's actual workflow. Home, About, Directory, Events, Workshops, Support, and Contact, all automated to grow or build to be manageable by a non-technical team without touching any code.
For example, the Directory and About pages pull directly from the CMS; automatically pairing the collective's origin story with the people currently running it. The Directory layers real-time search and discipline filtering in a public view, so anyone can browse the collective for connections, but member contact details stay protected behind a collaborator-specific contact form. Every page was designed to replace a piece of the old Linktree-and -spreadsheet system with something the team could actually maintain.
What Changed for the Team
The real measure of this project is in what it took off the admin's plate.
A few of the workflows that moved from being manual to built-in inlcude:
A directory that handles introductions
Connecting collaborators used to depend on the admin remembering projects and specialities and making the introduction personally. The directory now lets anyone search by name, location, and discipline and reach out to each other directly, with contact details remaining private until the contactee chooses to respond.
Designed newsletters fast
Every issue used to go out as a single plain-text email, typed and sent to a hand-compiled list of more than 200 people. Newsletters are now composed as structured content in the CMS and delivered as a sleek, branded HTML email in a couple of clicks.
Payments in one place
Memberships, event tickets, and donations were all split across several personal payment apps with no shared record. The dedicated Payment Processor now handles all three in one system tailored specifically for nonprofits, and embedded directly on the site under the Lab's own design.
Visibility in the tools they already use
Membership requests and event or workshop submissions now show up automatically as tasks in the collective's Project Management workspace. Nothing depends on someone remembering to check a Google form. Final approval and publish are still human-gated deliberately in the CMS, keeping notification and decision-making separate.
Design System
The visual language leans editorial and direct, an extension of the Lab's founding ethos: no gatekeeping. A near-black carbon anchors the palette against a warm off-white, with gold and scarlet reserved as high-contrast accents. Heavy borders, uppercase tracked type, and hard edges give the site a practical, utilitarian, zine-adjacent feel rather than the softness typical of a nonprofit.
Carbon
HEX
#262626
RGB
38, 38, 38
Mist
HEX
#FFF8FF
RGB
255, 248, 255
Gold
HEX
#FEDE16
RGB
254, 222, 22
Scarlet
HEX
#DB0A17
RGB
219, 10, 23
Ready for Launch
Before handoff, the site went through a standard full pre-launch checklist, including all the security and optimization expected with a Next and Vercel build, a mobile responsiveness review, as well as SEO and dynamic metadata generation so shared links render properly, and a dedicated check on image and video loading so niether hero videos nor directory photos ever work against page speed. Additionally, the privacy policy and terms of service were built with intention to match the design system exactly rather than reading as bolted-on boilerplate.
What This Project Revealed
Building for The Local Lab Co. was a lesson in doing more with less. Finding the exact balance in complexity the client needs and adding nothing more. A single well-designed schema and a handful of strategic integrations did more for this team than a heavier custom platform might have.
The result is a site that delivers far more than a basic marketing presence, outreach, planning, growth, and a sales pipeline, running for less than 3 tickets to see a show each month.
Ready?
Let'sbuildsomething
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