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Axelerant/Work/Private liberal-arts college
Build · 5 months · 2024
Private liberal-arts college

Brand-led Drupal design system that cut new-page build time by two-thirds.

Design and engineering paired on a component library co-owned by their marketing and IT teams. AI-assisted accessibility audit ran on every PR - kept WCAG 2.2 AA from day one.

01
The situation

What we walked into.

A private liberal-arts college with a beautiful brand and a website that didn't carry it. Marketing was building landing pages in a page builder; IT was holding the line on a Drupal core that hadn't been seriously refactored in five years.

The new VP of Marketing wanted a design system both teams could ship from. The CIO wanted accessibility as a deployment gate, not an audit fire-drill. Both wanted the new admissions cycle to ship on the new system.

"The design system isn't the win. The win is that marketing and IT are now shipping from the same library. Two years of arguing in the rear-view mirror in five months."
VP of Marketing · Private liberal-arts college · US
02
Where it landed

Experience, data, activation, optimization.

Experience
L1
Unified, connected journeys

Thirty-two shared components covering 90% of new-page need. Authoring UX rebuilt around marketing's actual workflow - not Drupal defaults.

Data
L2
One picture every team can act on

Program, faculty, and event content models normalized. Marketing finally stopped re-typing the program list into landing pages.

Activation
L3
Insight turned into shipped work

Inquiry and visit-booking flows rebuilt with measurement on every step. Conversion lifted on both within the admissions cycle.

Optimization
L4
A loop that makes the rest get smarter

AI-assisted accessibility check on every PR. Performance budget enforced at deploy time. Drift report runs weekly, owned by the IT team.

03
How it ran

The engagement, phase by phase.

  1. 01
    Month 1

    Discovery + design audit

    Audited the live site, the brand, and the page-builder estate. Co-designed the component library taxonomy with marketing + IT in the same room.

  2. 02
    Month 2–3

    Component library build

    Built 32 components in Storybook + Drupal Twig. Accessibility-first by default. Marketing reviewed every component before it shipped.

  3. 03
    Month 4

    Reference pages + migration

    Migrated the admissions, programs, and visit pages onto the new system as the canonical references. Internal team paired through every page.

  4. 04
    Month 5

    Hand-off + admissions launch

    Admissions cycle launched on the new system. New-page build time down 66%. WCAG 2.2 AA enforced at PR. Stewardship handed to internal team.

04
What ran underneath

The stack and the pod.

Stack
CMS
Drupal 10
Design system
Storybook + Twig components
Hosting
Acquia
Accessibility
Automated WCAG 2.2 AA on every PR
Performance
Deploy-gate performance budget
Pod
  • 1× Engagement Director
  • 1× Design system lead
  • 1× Senior Drupal engineer
  • 1× Frontend engineer
  • 1× Accessibility specialist
  • 1× Marketing-pod liaison
Ask Foyer about this record
Brief us · A situation like Private liberal-arts college

Have a similar shape on your plate? We'll come back with how we'd run yours.

The Private liberal-arts college engagement was build over 5 months · 2024. If your situation rhymes - same stack, same pressure, same window - send us the brief and a named delivery lead will respond inside one business day with a one-page read on how we'd plug in.

Mutual NDA before company names.
Standard mutual NDA on request.
Maps onto the Private liberal-arts college pattern, or doesn't.
We'll tell you which engagement is actually closest.
Two-week scoping sprint, fixed fee.
Memo, risk register, recommended mode.
Brief form · Engagement

Replied to by a named partner within one business day.

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