The College of Natural Resources (CNR) at the University of California, Berkeley, studies natural and human systems from biological, ecological, economic, and social science perspectives. Issues that CNR engage in include sustainable food systems, obesity, water policy, energy policy, climate change, and the connections between the human genome, diet, and disease. The college consists of several academic units, research centers and field stations.
CNR came to Black Antelope to design a new responsive website on Drupal, design new Information Architecture, build an Intranet for faculty, staff and students, migrate the old site, and to ensure optimal SEO.
The resulting website effectively communicates the mission of CNR, with bold imagery and simplified content.
About the project
The UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources was seeking a new website to be designed and built on Drupal, with a focus on bold imagery, simplicity, and having very clear branding for both the department and university.
The end result successfully solved the design challenges the college was facing, and effectively reflects the message of the college and the work that they do. The website is responsive, incorporates a stylistic element taken from the existing branding, and follows UC Berkeley’s branding guidelines in terms of suggested typography and color palette.
We created a design hierarchy and a child site template, so that the college can roll out new department sites quickly and easily, all following a consistent look and feel while clearly being part of the larger college.
Why Drupal was chosen
Drupal is an ideal platform for university department and college websites, for several reasons including its clean organization, consistency, and structure of content. For this reason, many UC Berkeley departments have decided to use Drupal for their websites.
Drupal is also excellent for its robust ACL / permissions layer, which facilitates very effective Intranets for staff, faculty, and alumni. The ACL layer also makes it easily feasible to allow faculty to log into the site and edit their own profiles and relevant content.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
CalNet is used so that staff and professors can log into the site with their CalNet IDs, and have access to edit only their own profiles.
