The Aten Blog

The Aten Blog

We have things to say about design, process, and code. Read about them here, subscribe to our feed, or follow us on twitter.

Bringing Drupal to the Grassroots, Distro Style

"So what do you do?"

“I work in web development.”

“Oh, you build websites!”

“Yep!”

“Gosh, my organization’s website is horrendous, we could really use a facelift. Do you think you could help us out?”

Allied Media Conference Reportback

Aten Design Group had the great pleasure of attending the 14th Annual Allied Media Conference (AMC), a gathering of artists, filmmakers, web developers, grassroots organizers, musicians, and other media-makers working to transform the world through media.

More on the Center for Investigative Reporting

The Aten team recently completed a redesign project for cironline.org. Our CEO, Justin Toupin, wrote about the launch a few months back. CIR, the Center for Investigative Reporting, is a nonprofit organization devoted to in-depth reporting, often covering issues of injustice and abuse of power taking place around the world.

Roosevelt Institute's Fully Operational ND2.0

This week, eight weeks after we completed Roosevelt Institute’s ND2.0 project, the redesigned blog is brimming with current posts and activity. ND2.0, or Next New Deal, is a blog fostered by supporters of the Roosevelt legacy and acts as a community think tank for progressive leaders and communicators endeavoring to restore America to economic and social balance.

We're looking for a talented UI/Interactive designer

If you, or someone you know, is an awesome user experience/interactive designer, and is interested in working on exciting projects for awesome clients with an excellent team, take a look at our job post and get in touch!

Express checkout with Drupal Commerce

Drupal Commerce is a robust, flexible e-commerce platform. Wading through its several pages of configuration options isn't always easy, though. That's why we've put together a cheat-sheet for configuring a clean, simple express checkout with Drupal Commerce.

QwertyTown: Keyboarding Lesson

QwertyTown is an online community that teaches kids to type. Our goal was to create an interactive experience that makes typing fun. The keyboarding lesson is a flash module where kids learn to type. The client gave us an outline with levels as main categories, then individual lessons for each level. Each lesson covers a specific key set the student needs to learn. We wrote the ActionScript and built the back-end architecture that makes the keyboarding lesson work.

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Random Hacks of Kindness

This weekend, more than 1,500 self-proclaimed "hackers" are gathering in cities around the world to work on technology solutions for world problems, including advance warning for severe weather situations, tracking lost children in large-scale emergencies, real time climate data comparison, and more than 60 others. The "hackathon" events are part of a global initiative called Random Hacks of Kindness, founded in 2009 in a partnership between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA and the World Bank.

We had the incredible privilege of working with the RHoK team to redesign and rebuild RHoK.org in Drupal 7.

jQuery Cycle FTW!

When it comes to web development, it would hurt my feelings if you called me a one-trick-pony. However, for the majority of projects I've worked on, there has been a need for a slideshow and/or rotating content. For a number of years, SlideShowPro (a flexible Flash slideshow), was my goto for slideshows.

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Test-Driven Sitemap Design

We spend significant time and effort in the information architecture phase of projects, during which our principle goal is to create an effective sitemap. As with other steps in the process, we pitch an initial recommendation, solicit feedback, host discussions, make some changes, rinse and repeat. Also similar to other parts of the process, it is critical to establish metrics that define a particular final product as successful. With sitemaps, this has proven particularly important.

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