Dive Bar Website Design | Lee Harvey's Dallas Case Study | Designah

LeeHand

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services

Website, design

technologies

Svelte

location

Dallas, Tx

sector

SaaS

duration

3 weeks

year

2025

Project Description

In 2025, Lee Harvey’s, a legendary dive bar in Dallas, Texas, enlisted our help to create a website that matched its gritty, no-frills personality. Known for its late-night hours, unpretentious vibe, and accolades like Best Bar in Dallas and Best Dive Bar, Lee Harvey’s needed a digital presence that made essential info—like its daily operating hours (11 AM–2 AM) and kitchen schedule—easy to find while staying true to its rebellious charm. Our goal was to design a mobile-friendly site that reflected the bar’s authenticity, with bold visuals, intuitive navigation, and a no-nonsense layout to help patrons quickly access what they needed.

The final website blends dive-bar edge with modern functionality, featuring scannable hours, prominent contact details (including a tap-to-call button), and a raw, textured aesthetic that avoids over-polishing. By highlighting Lee Harvey’s awards and laid-back vibe, the site now serves as a seamless extension of the bar itself—ensuring locals and newcomers can easily find their way to 1807 Gould Street for a drink, bite, or late-night hangout.

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Web Design

We began by studying Lee Harvey’s raw, dive-bar energy to craft a website that felt true to its roots—unpolished but intentional. Instead of a sleek, corporate look, we leaned into vintage textures, bold typography, and a dark, moody palette to mirror the bar’s gritty charm. The landing page cuts straight to the chase: a hero section spotlighting drinks and pool tables, upcoming events, and a punchy testimonial—all above the fold. Navigation was kept simple, with a sticky menu linking to key pages (Bar, Pool Club, Menu) so regulars could find what they needed fast.

For deeper exploration, we added expanded pages (Contact, About Us, Menu) with the same no-nonsense approach: high-contrast text, intuitive layouts, and mobile-first design. Buttons were styled to look like neon bar signs, and photos were intentionally unfiltered to keep the vibe authentic. The result? A website that feels like walking into Lee Harvey’s—no fluff, just good times and easy info, whether you’re checking kitchen hours or the next pool tournament.

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Web Development

With the design locked in, we built the website using SvelteKit and Tailwind CSS to ensure lightning-fast performance and a responsive, no-fuss experience—critical for a bar where patrons might be browsing on their phones after a few drinks. SvelteKit’s efficiency kept load times minimal, while Tailwind let us maintain the site’s gritty aesthetic with utility-first styling. To empower Lee Harvey’s team, we developed a custom dashboard for adding blogs, events, and menu updates without touching code, keeping

Behind the scenes, we wrote clean, modular code for easy maintenance, rigorously testing across devices to guarantee the site worked flawlessly—whether someone was checking kitchen hours at noon or event details at midnight. The result? A website that’s as durable as the bar itself, with a backend simple enough for any staff member to manage. No tech headaches, just smooth functionality that lets Lee Harvey’s focus on what they do best: serving up good times.

Graphic Design

For Lee Harvey's gritty dive bar aesthetic, we developed a bold yet functional visual system using a stripped-down color palette of black, white, and a light red accent - keeping the design raw and unpretentious while ensuring clear navigation. The vibrant red highlights active tabs in the navbar, creating intuitive wayfinding that works even after a few drinks. We selected Inter as our primary typeface for its exceptional readability at all sizes - crucial for late-night browsing - using its full range of weights to establish hierarchy: bold for punchy headings, regular for content, and gray secondary text for paragraphs and less critical information.

The layout follows dive-bar logic: no-nonsense and to the point. We used generous spacing and clear section divisions to prevent visual clutter, with all elements aligned to a strict grid that keeps the chaos organized - much like the bar itself. Interactive elements like buttons and tabs were designed with extra padding and bold strokes to ensure they're easily tappable on mobile devices. This purposeful approach to typography and layout creates a digital experience that feels authentically Lee Harvey's - straightforward, functional, and full of character without unnecessary frills.

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Final Product

The result is a lightning-fast website that perfectly captures Lee Harvey's gritty charm while delivering exceptional performance. With optimized images and a fully responsive layout, the site works flawlessly whether patrons are browsing on a desktop or checking event details on their phone after last call. We pushed our creative boundaries by embracing a vintage aesthetic - a departure from our usual modern style - and shared this bold direction with design communities on Reddit and Facebook. While some initially questioned the vintage approach, after explaining our vision of honoring the bar's authentic dive-bar character, the feedback turned overwhelmingly positive.

The website has become more than just a digital menu - it's an extension of Lee Harvey's personality. The staff especially appreciate how easy it is to update events and specials, while regulars love being able to check kitchen hours at a glance. This project not only challenged us creatively but proved that sometimes breaking from your signature style leads to the most authentic results. The vintage treatment, which we were initially hesitant about, ultimately became the project's greatest strength - creating a digital experience that feels as genuine as a well-worn barstool at Lee Harvey's.

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