Partnering for a digital transformation
Given the new Executive regime, we pursued the large initiative of redesigning and re-platforming our entire website. We partnered with an outside vendor to design and develop this new visual language. In this project, we aimed to structure a new foundation that would allow CFR to build products more efficiently moving forward.
Timeline
1 year
Team
Vendor (2 designers)
CFR (Managing Director, Director of Design, Creative Director, 2 PMs)
Methods
Moodboard + Prioritization Workshops, Creative Direction, Visual Design
-
Business: Drupal’s complex CMS limits each department’s output
User: Lack of functional and visual consistency across the website
Defining the problem: How might we enable both our organization and users to optimize their experience with the new CMS?
-
Gather insights from other departments throughout the process
Leverage WP VIP
Collaborate with a vendor who can effectively synthesize + produce
-
Getting as close as possible to one band, one sound
Consensus is valuable, but it can't come at the cost of progress for a project of this scale, even with all the cooks in this kitchenDevelop an intuitive, scalable, and adaptive CMS
Moving forward, we needed a foundation that could be more adaptable for Editorial to write, for Digital to build, and for Studies to createCraft an award-winning design language
When someone comes to or engages with anything CFR-related, the desire is for our distinct aesthetic to be memorable
-
Transmitting institutional knowledge
What the CMS needs to support goes far deeper than what any brief can capture — how content is structured, how departments operate, and what edge cases existCreative direction instead of design production
My role shifting to articulating vision, giving feedback, and course-correcting required a willingness to relinquish some controlFilling component gaps
As content migrated and pages were built out, gaps surfaced that the vendor's scope didn't cover but we couldn’t derail the broader timeline
-
As a Studies expert, I want to increase visibility of my content and continue creating curated experiences.
As an Executive leader, I want to elevate the CFR brand and collaborate with the best experts + thought leaders.
As an Editorial writer, I want to focus on the quality of our content and not worry myself about how to use the CMS.
As an Outreach coordinator, I want to know I’m using the proper visual language and easily produce events.
As a Digital team member, I want the flexibility to produce products and experiences for our stakeholders + users.
As a CFR user, I want to discover content and gain more context about a topic my community engages with.
“We cannot continue telling the stakeholders that building certain components is technically not feasible or too complex because of the backend.”
“I can’t wait to not have to Frankenstein an article or page within Drupal.”
Early Ideation
Moodboards and prioritization workshops helped surface not just aesthetic preferences, but the underlying values each stakeholder wanted the site to embody. Iterating required clear communication and trust in both directions as we tested directions for components, features, and content types.
Final Designs
After migrating content and building out pages, we’re picking up where our vendor left off. Refining components that don’t work with real content, simplifying blocks due to performance issues, extending the design language to missed opportunities, and writing documentation with rationale for us moving forward.
