La Noche de los Libros

La Noche de los Libros is Madrid’s flagship literary festival, a city-wide celebration that brings authors, readers, bookstores and institutions together every spring. While the festival has evolved, the website hadn’t kept pace. Navigation was confusing, much of the content was hard to find and the mobile experience was almost unusable.

The challenge wasn’t just to modernize the look, but to reimagine the entire experience for the thousands of people who rely on the site each year to discover events, plan routes and explore Madrid through the lens of literature.

After reviewing analytics, user feedback and testing the original site across devices, four key problems stood out:

• The site structure made it hard to find content, especially event schedules.
• The experience broke on mobile, making the majority of traffic struggle to engage.
• Visuals didn’t reflect the cultural significance or energy of the event.
• Navigation patterns were inconsistent, requiring extra clicks and confusion.

To address these issues, I established three main design principles:

• Accessibility: Everyone should be able to find, navigate and attend events with ease.
• Cultural Representation: The design needed to visually echo the identity of the event: literary, modern and vibrant.
• Scalability: As the event grows, the platform must grow with it.

I started with the homepage, the first impression for most visitors. I integrated the thematic video directly on the landing page to communicate the festival’s tone and message, paired with clear, actionable links. Content that had been buried in inner pages was surfaced prominently and the new layout used a strong visual hierarchy that prioritized date, location and navigation.

Previously hidden behind dropdown menus, special events were redesigned with persistent on-page navigation and consistent visual cards. Each card followed a standard format, making browsing faster and visually coherent across devices and categories.

The activities section needed to serve two kinds of users: those browsing by theme and those searching by location. To meet both needs, I built a combined filtering and map interaction system. Users could apply filters by genre, format, or venue and see results update in real-time on both the list and the map.

The activity cards were redesigned to be responsive and touch-friendly, with key details like time, location and age groups easily scannable.

The press page was restructured for clarity. Instead of a dense list of links, I created a simple, editorial-style layout that made materials easier to find and more appealing to media outlets. This redesign helped increase media coverage ahead of the event.

Since most traffic came from mobile devices, I prioritized this experience from the start. I redesigned the menu system to use full-screen overlays, making navigation clearer and more accessible. Interactive elements were re-sized and spaced to meet WCAG standards for touch accessibility and every component was tested across common breakpoints.