Designing public access across a city

Since 2018, Niftic has been embedded with Salt Lake City as a creative and strategic partner — shaping how the City communicates across seven different departments. What began as project-based support evolved into a systemic partnership: refining digital platforms, clarifying reports, and creating design systems that reach tens of thousands of residents and businesses every year.

The work hasn’t been simple. Each department came with distinct audiences, priorities, and timelines. Some relied on outdated PDFs; others needed interactive tools. The challenge was to balance those individual needs with the bigger responsibility of clarity, accessibility, and trust for the public.

Over the years, we’ve helped:

• Make complex construction projects transparent and trackable for residents
• Position Salt Lake City as an attractive hub for businesses and investors
• Turn dense mayoral initiatives into clear, accessible digital platforms
• Modernize cultural venues and arts programming with better visibility and engagement
• Build technical foundations that scale across multiple city websites

It’s not just design or development. It’s helping a city communicate more effectively with its people.

Gallivan Center: A Downtown Hub, Reimagined

The Gallivan Center is Salt Lake City’s downtown gathering space — hosting festivals, concerts, ice skating, and more. We designed and developed a new website that reflects that energy, complete with a live weather feature, better event navigation, and streamlined booking for corporate events.

Outcome: The Gallivan Center’s digital presence now matches its role as a cultural hub, making it easier for residents and visitors to engage with downtown events.

Economic Development: Making the Case for Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City competes with other metros for talent, business, and investment. We designed internal and public-facing reports that show the City’s progress clearly and credibly, year after year.

The Why SLC? campaign became a flagship piece of that work, presenting Salt Lake City as a place of opportunity and growth.

Outcome: Reports and campaigns don’t just look better — they function as tools of trust. They give residents evidence of progress, show investors opportunity, and position Salt Lake City as a competitive hub.

Mayor’s Office & Sustainability: Vision Made Accessible

The Mayor’s climate, infrastructure, and growth plans spanned hundreds of pages of technical PDF documents. Important, but inaccessible. We built SLCMayorPlan.com — a public hub that makes those priorities easy to navigate, with clear goals, timelines, and progress updates.

Outcome: What was once buried in PDFs is now transparent and public-facing. Residents can quickly see where the City is headed — and hold leadership accountable.

Arts Council: Celebrating a Vibrant City

From public art and festivals to one of Salt Lake’s best-known concert series, the Arts Council makes the city more vibrant. We designed a suite of print and digital materials that amplify their work and give artists stronger visibility.

Outcome: The Arts Council now has a clearer platform to promote exhibitions, distribute grants, and engage the community in shaping Salt Lake’s cultural identity.

Transportation: Turning Complexity Into Clarity

The Transportation department had dozens of competing initiatives — from bus stop upgrades to construction communications. We helped prioritize the most impactful efforts, then refined the MyStreet platform to be more intuitive, visually engaging, and interactive.

Alongside local developers, we also worked to embed smarter transportation options into future multifamily, office, and retail projects. And to document progress, we coordinated large-scale “before and after” photography, creating a long-term visual record of improvements.

Outcome: Residents now have a clearer, interactive way to see how transportation projects affect them, how to get involved, and how those projects improve the city’s future. The department gained reusable templates, icons, and a strategic roadmap to guide communications for years to come.

Information Systems: Building the Digital Backbone

We partnered with the City’s Information Systems team to provide ongoing engineering support, site maintenance, and a large-scale migration of all SLC-managed URLs.

Outcome: Departments gained faster, more consistent websites and a technical foundation that makes future growth easier, cheaper, and more reliable.

A Partnership Built on Access, Clarity, and Trust

Across departments, the through-line of our work has been making government more usable and engaging for its people. Whether it’s tracking construction projects, understanding climate goals, or discovering cultural events downtown, our partnership with Salt Lake City has turned scattered communications into accessible systems.

The City is still a collection of different departments. But thanks to consistent design systems, digital foundations, and a commitment to accessibility, residents now experience those departments as part of a city that communicates with them — not at them.