SYN

Australia's Student Youth Network (SYN) recently revealed a new look for their website, and upgraded functionality for young media makers to produce and publish great media. The project was lead by Agent Blank's Daniel Walmsley and we had the chance to catch up with him to learn all about the project.

Q&A with Daniel Walmsley

How long did the project take? From design to live?
6 months. But in that time we re-built and re-themed the site three times. It was our first major Drupal project ... so we were very hard on ourselves about quality.

Where does the design inspiration come from?
The design was by one of Agent Blank's team, a genius called Laert Jansen. The art direction from the client was "make it look 'Youth Oriented' but without being stereotypical, condescending or too 'metal'". Laert was our second designer - the first design unfortunately looked like a piece of hi-fi equipment. Laert's first design had kids at a rock concert, which was deemed too stereotypical. His final design got a huge thumbs-up. Also, credit must go to EmSpace's Dan Lennox who helped with the theme slicing.

What is the banner image?
If you look closely it's a roller-coaster upside down with the people's legs sticking out. I think it looks like Dinosaur bones. Either way, it's pretty cool ;-)

What in your opinion, separates this from other Drupal site designs?
I think the fact that it's not very boxy or corporate looking, that it's extremely modern without feeling "cold", and that it manages to pack in a lot of interesting features without feeling crowded. We had to make some difficult decisions about the focus of the site in order for it not to feel like a huge grab-bag of functionality. That's a trap that I think a lot of Drupal sites fall into - the "kitchen sink" effect. It's tempting because there are so many awesome plugins, but ultimately the age-old designers' maxim applies here: "Great design is what's left when there's nothing more you can remove".

Which modules were the most integral in implementing the design?
I think Blue Droplet Video was the main one. Blue Droplet Media has an advantage over a lot of other Drupal media modules because of the straightforward implementation, without requiring too many complicated workflows or dependent modules, yet it integrates nicely with views and panels.

Secondly, of course, Panels and Views. These were used everywhere on the site, and now the client is using them too. They love the fact that they can add complex pages and layouts themselves without having to constantly ask the designers or programmers for anything.

Thirdly, the Station module (particularly the scheduling, and the Program CCK content type). Absolutely brilliant functionality out-of-the-box with their broadcast grid.