DC Design Week 2021 is a Jekyll-built static website repository that powers the official site of the AIGA DC design festival, deployed on Netlify and using Siteleaf as its content management system.
What is DC Design Week 2021?
DC Design Week 2021 is the source code repository for the website of the annual design festival organized by AIGA DC, the Washington, D.C. chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. The repository contains the Jekyll configuration, templates, and content structure that generate the festival's public website. The project's topics confirm the stack: jekyll, siteleaf, jamstack, static-site, and aiga-dc. The README also displays a Netlify deploy status badge, showing the site is built and hosted on Netlify.
Key Features
- Jekyll static site generator — The site is built with Jekyll, which converts Markdown and Liquid templates into static HTML for fast, database-free hosting.
- Siteleaf CMS — Siteleaf is listed in the repository topics, indicating the site works with this headless CMS to manage event content.
- Netlify deployment — The Netlify status badge in the README confirms the project uses Netlify's continuous deployment pipeline to build and publish the site.
- Jamstack architecture — The repository is tagged jamstack, meaning it leverages pre-built static assets served via CDN with content management decoupled from presentation.
- Festival archives — The README links to archived DC Design Week websites for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, each hosted on its own subdomain.
- Committee about pages — Links to about pages for the organizing committees from 2016 through 2020 are included, preserving volunteer history.
- AIGA DC social links — Direct links to AIGA DC's Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr accounts appear in the README for promotion and community engagement.
Who is it for?
AIGA DC organizers use this repository to manage and publish the annual DC Design Week website, coordinating event details and schedules. Developers contributing to the project work with the Jekyll codebase to customize templates and static site behavior. Volunteers and community members can reference the archived subdomains to revisit past festival years, and attendees rely on the generated site for current event information.
What can you do with it?
Festival organizers: Update event listings and site content through Siteleaf, which triggers a rebuild and deploy on Netlify for a live site. Web developers: Modify the Jekyll theme's templates and styles to create a new design for each edition of the festival. Community historians: Use the linked 2016–2020 archive sites to study the evolution of DC Design Week's online presence.
FAQ
What static site generator does this project use?
The repository topics list jekyll, so the site is generated with Jekyll, a Ruby-based tool that produces static HTML from Markdown and Liquid templates. This setup makes the site fast and serverless.
Does this site use a CMS?
Yes, Siteleaf is listed among the repository topics. Siteleaf is a content management system designed for static sites, allowing content updates without editing code directly, though the README does not provide setup instructions yet.
How is the site deployed?
The README includes a Netlify deploy status badge, which indicates that the project is deployed on Netlify. Netlify automatically builds the Jekyll site and serves it through its global CDN.
What is DC Design Week?
DC Design Week is an annual design festival run by AIGA DC. The repository is the 2021 edition's website source, and previous years' sites are linked in the README for reference.




