Durham Medical Orchestra

Client Profile

Durham Medical Orchestra (Demo Preview)

Project Summary

The Durham Medical Orchestra draws together health-related professionals, medical and graduate students of the life sciences, and community members in Durham, North Carolina. Founded in 2010 and affiliated with the Vice Provost for the Arts at Duke University, the all-volunteer orchestra performs free concerts across the Triangle. We rebuilt their site around a single editorial idea, "where medicine meets music," to spotlight their free concerts and high-engagement concerto competition.

Objectives

• Lead with the orchestra’s distinctive identity, health professionals making music, instead of a generic community-ensemble template
• Make the free-admission concert season and full program details easy to find and share
• Give the Concerto Competition a clear, scannable two-round structure with eligibility and requirements
• Surface tax-deductible donation paths and 501(c)(3) Foundation details to drive giving
• Hand the all-volunteer committee a site they can edit themselves through the Fugue Lab CMS

What We Implemented

• Custom "where medicine meets music" editorial theme: clinical paper, deep petrol-teal ink, and a warm brass accent used as punctuation
• Spectral display type paired with IBM Plex Sans body, plus an asymmetric split editorial hero with a hard-cropped B&W conductor photo
• Signature EKG-to-staff hairline that begins as a heartbeat waveform and resolves into a five-line musical staff, reused across the site
• Vite + React 18 + Tailwind CSS 4 wired to @gjl/site-kit as a bespoke-but-CMS-editable site
• CMS content seam via useSite() with each block independently falling back to compiled-in static content
• SSR/hydration with per-route static prerendering (SSG) plus generated sitemap and robots
• SES-or-mailto contact form across seven routes: Home, About, Concerts, Concerto Competition, Musicians, Support, Contact

Results

• Seven fully prerendered routes scoring 97/100 (A) on the rendered quality audit
• Accessibility, SEO, content, and structured data all at 100 on every page
• A distinctive, on-brand identity that reads as a clinical-arts orchestra rather than a stock template
• A CMS-editable platform the volunteer committee can update without touching design or code