150 years of community. One place to find it all.

Temple Emanu-El has been a cornerstone of Dallas’s Jewish community since 1872 — the city’s first Jewish congregation, now home to more than 2,500 families spanning diverse backgrounds, generations, and walks of life. For 150 years, the Temple has been a place of sacred encounter: prayer, learning, social justice, and community woven together under one roof. The digital presence hadn’t kept pace. A fragmented experience across multiple platforms — public site, member portal, and livestream — made it difficult for both longtime members and first-time visitors to find what they needed, feel welcomed, or understand what Temple Emanu-El stood for. They came to Tegan to fix that. What followed was one of our most layered engagements — and one that has continued well beyond the initial launch.

Visit Site

When it was time to kick off design, we knew we were in for a fun ride. Temple’s awe-inspiring architectural elements served as a guide for creating a seamless connection between physical and digital spaces. The color blocks that animate throughout the site were inspired by George Kepes’ abstract stained-glass windows in the Olan Sanctuary. And the rainbow load bar at the top of the website was designed to emphasize Temple’s welcoming stance of diversity and inclusion. (It also played as a subtle nod to Suzanne Tick’s mylar balloons installation that covers the Torah ark in the Stern Chapel).

On the development side, our team built the site in WordPress to keep back-end admin and updates easy and user-friendly. We also integrated Temple’s livestream page with the website, making it more accessible to members and newcomers. And lastly, we tackled their membership-focused platform with a much-needed refresh, updating it to match the look and feel of the main site for consistency, while also reducing the amount of content for a more accessible user journey.