Jul 15, 2026
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FROM THE PRESS
Singapore, 15 July 2026 — Vertis, a Singapore-based digital agency specialising in transformative digital experiences for mission-led brands, today announced the successful launch of the redesigned Esplanade.com and its companion digital arts publication, Esplanade Offstage. The new platform, live as of this week, unifies two previously fragmented websites into a single, cohesive digital home for Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, Singapore's national performing arts centre.
The launch marks the culmination of a website revamp project Vertis was appointed to lead in September 2025, following a competitive public tender that drew proposals from eight regional and international agencies. It is the first milestone of Esplanade’s digital transformation journey to shape how audiences discover, engage with and experience the arts in an increasingly connected world. On Esplanade.com, one of Singapore’s busiest arts websites, audiences can now move effortlessly from discovering a performance to exploring the stories, ideas and artistic voices behind it.
From two sites to one connected experience
For years, Esplanade.com and Offstage operated as separate destinations with little connection between them. The redesign brings both properties under one roof, introducing a unified navigation system, a new content structure built to scale across Esplanade's 4,000+ annual programmes, and a distinct visual identity for each experience: Onstage in light mode for live performance, Offstage in dark mode for behind-the-scenes and archival storytelling, connected by a simple toggle.
The new platform was shaped by research with over 20 stakeholders across Esplanade's teams, alongside audience personas ranging from first-time visitors and families to performers and arts patrons. Key improvements include:
- A redesigned discovery experience — curated landing pages, an events calendar, and clearer content groupings that help audiences explore with or without a specific event in mind
- A dedicated Visit hub — consolidating practical planning information, from getting there to accessibility, in one place
- Offstage reimagined as an editorial experience — moving from a scroll-heavy archive to a curated storytelling platform
- A new, scalable design system — reusable templates and components built to support Esplanade's programming for years to come
Built for an institution of national scale
Beyond the visual redesign, the platform was engineered to meet the standards expected of a national cultural institution. Vertis built the new site on Sitecore XM Cloud with a headless front end on Vercel, structured across fully isolated development, staging, and live environments so that new content and features can be tested safely before reaching the public. The underlying architecture follows a defence-in-depth security model — layered protections spanning network, application, and data levels, with strict identity controls and secrets management — reflecting the same rigour Vertis brings to its government, education, and cultural-sector work.
Ahead of launch, the platform went through a structured user acceptance testing process with Esplanade's business teams, validating everything from content accuracy to user journeys across devices, to ensure the site was ready for the scale and scrutiny of a national platform from day one.
"This is more than just a digital facelift — it's about crafting a future-ready platform that reflects the soul of Esplanade while making the arts more accessible to all," said Birendra Balakrishnan, Co-founder, Vertis.
"The real challenge was scale. Esplanade's programming and Offstage's storytelling together represent a massive range of content, and our job was to give audiences intuitive ways into all of it. By connecting related Onstage events and Offstage articles, we've built a structure that makes it easier to browse, easier to discover, and easier to appreciate just how much Esplanade brings to Singapore," said Mathew Searcy, Executive Creative Director, Vertis.
"As audience behaviour evolves, we also grow in our ways of building lasting relationships with our communities, through personalised and relevant experiences. This launch is an important step towards creating a connected digital ecosystem that enables us to serve audiences better and strengthen Esplanade's role as Singapore's national performing arts centre," said Lee Kit Pui, Director, Marketing, The Esplanade Co Ltd.
Lee said the next phases of Esplanade’s digital transformation, for which subsequent competitive public tenders will be held, include enhancing customer relationship capabilities, developing a unified audience data platform and delivering more personalised communications and content experiences.
A landmark project for a growing agency
As Singapore's national performing arts centre, Esplanade holds an outsized place in the country's cultural life — a venue as recognisable to Singaporeans as it is to visitors, and one that anchors the nation's arts and cultural landscape. Leading its digital transformation stands as one of the most significant projects in Vertis' growth to date, building on the agency's track record of complex digital work for government, education, and cultural institutions.
The redesign has also begun to draw early recognition within Singapore's design community, including an anticipated nomination for the SG Mark, Singapore's national design accolade — a development Vertis looks forward to sharing more on in the coming months.