A Mission with a Museum

The Challenge

The Cade Museum is located in Gainesville, FL. Unlike traditional museums, Cade is focused on transforming communities by inspiring and equipping future inventors, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. Coining the term “inventivity,” the museum is a tangible space to spark curiosity and foster creativity.

Despite being a landmark known for whimsy and innovation, their website fell short of reflecting this experience with inconsistent branding, unclear navigation, broken features, and ineffective calls to action. The museum needed an online presence that matched their vibrant in-person interactions.

Our Vision

We knew that the Cade Museum already had an incredible brand to work off of with our website design. Our main focus was to leverage their in-person experience as well as their strong social media presence to craft a new visual identity online. This was also an opportunity to go beyond just highlighting Cade’s exhibits and actually weave in their mission throughout the content, visuals, and strategy.

The website needed to align users’ experiences with Cade’s brand across both digital and physical spaces, serving as a central hub for information, planning, and generating interest.
The Cade Museum is focused on creativity and invention. The final product needed to look great but also offer innovative features that captured the heart of the Cade.
The new website highlighted Cade’s mission of transforming communities, aligning with their goal to be recognized as "a mission with a museum." This mission was prioritized throughout the project.
A room in the Cade museum with a sign that says

The Strategy

This engagement involved elevating a well-known brand online while supporting a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy.

We created a new custom website and implemented an ongoing digital marketing strategy to build a sustainable brand system.

The Branding

We started by deeply understanding the Cade Museum’s existing visual and verbal identity to build on their strong foundation.
Our task was to amplify this through web design and strategic brand recommendations, capturing the museum's bold characteristics and the dynamic energy of their exhibits.

The Web Design & Development

Designing for Cade’s whimsical brand was a joy. We used illustrations, animations, bold colors, and parallax effects to create a website that captures the inviting and exhilarating experience of visiting the museum.

Unique Website Features

The old website struggled with organizing Cade Museum’s events, exhibits, and camps. We added an event calendar for an overview and individual pages for detailed information, making it easy for users to view, learn about, and register for events or purchase tickets.

2023 Gold Addy AwardOverall Best Website

The Cade Museum

Content Development

Our sitemap development process is crucial for not only the navigation of the website but also for the intentionality of the content layout.
Our sitemap needed to highlight the most important calls to action and also house different places for information based on our various user groups.

Inbound Marketing

Cade’s social media was their strongest channel before partnering with PHOS, effectively showcasing their unique brand. We built on this by delivering timely information and experimenting with new content styles and graphics, increasing engagement with their followers.
Collaborating with their marketing team, we aligned on campaign messaging, creative direction, and strategy. This was exemplified by our partnership in promoting the Tom Petty “Among the Wildflowers” exhibit, managing the campaign from planning to execution to maximize promotion and excitement.
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PHOS is a fun and innovative company to work with. Their team took plenty of time getting to know our DNA, which helped build a firm foundation for our partnership.

Jody Farmer

The Cade Museum