By Aten Design Group on

The NYC-based Center for Court Innovation creates programs in New York, performs original research and provides expert assistance globally, all with a unified goal: to help create a more effective and humane justice system.

The Center needed a website that would powerfully tell their story – to the right audience, with impact.

Visit courtinnovation.org →
Why Drupal was chosen: 

Several key factors made this project a great fit for Drupal 8. They included:

  • Content strategy was a key component of the project. Drupal’s flexible content model, coupled with its powerful templating framework, allowed the Center to present its content and tell its story exactly how it needed to.
  • Design flexibility was particularly important. The Center was wary of creating a design that looked just like other contemporary websites: hero image, headline overlay, with content below. Component-based theming in Drupal 8 brought the Center’s unique design vision to life.
  • Easy-to-use features for writing and managing content were a must-have. Drupal’s simple authoring interface, plus its powerful tools for site-builders and admins, were a big win for the Center’s content editors.
  • The Center already had experience with Drupal and wanted to leverage that investment. Their internal development team was excited to level up with Drupal 8.
Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome): 

A complete redesign of the Center for Court Innovation’s previous website, this project included the following key goals:

  • Clearly communicate who and what the Center is, and why it matters. The Center’s work is complex and broad, and the overwhelming need for justice reform is overtly clear. At its core, this project was about powerfully telling the organization’s story and intuitively connecting with its audiences.
  • Deliver the right material to the right people. The Center manages programs, produces original research and offers expert perspective across a broad range of just reform issues. Clear, effective information architecture was critical. Simple tools that allow editors to publish and manage content were equally important.
  • Attract consulting clients. The Center offers expert assistance to justice reformers all over the world and needed to more effectively communicate with prospective clients.
  • Drive participation with increased donations and new funders. The Center’s work is relevant and deeply important for societies all over the world. They sought to connect directly with those who might support their cause.

Technical specifications

Drupal version: 
Drupal 8.x
Key modules/theme/distribution used: 
Prototype
Paragraphs
Media entity
Focal Point
Search API
Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen: 
  • Prototype base theme provides a highly customizable starting point for building beautiful responsive designs in Drupal. It includes a component-driven base theme, default breakpoints and a number of helpful conventions for frontend development.
  • Paragraphs and Media Entity were key ingredients for building rich, flexible layouts across the website.
  • Focus Point - Allows content editors to change the center point of an image before cropping to image styles.
  • Search API Solr - provides a powerful, faceted search experience.
Community contributions: 

The Paragraphs-based approach further solidified some of the work for the Stories module.

Organizations involved: 
Aten Design Group
Project team: 

Aten Design Group in collaboration with the Center for Court Innovation

Sectors: 
Non-profit