Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) rebuilt its website on the Drupal platform to better manage content and attract new students. SCAD tested Drupal on smaller sites before using it to rebuild SCAD.edu over eight months. Using Drupal and Acquia Cloud allowed SCAD to focus on creativity while Acquia handled infrastructure. The new responsive site appeals to prospective students and showcases SCAD's events. SCAD can now quickly build microsites and launched a multilingual site, positioning itself for continued growth.

1. acquia.com
As a private, nonprofit design school, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)
relies on its website to represent the artistic brand of the university. Its site serves two
main purposes: to attract new students and strengthen the university’s reputation within
the art and design industry.
“We’re getting projects out the door quicker, focusing on our recruitment
goals, and thinking in ways we never thought possible.”
— Ian Leslie, Executive Director of Interactive Services for SCAD
Savannah College of Art and Design Rewrites the
Rules on Recruitment with Its New Website
Open Source Drupal Backed by the Security of Acquia Cloud
Allows University to Stay Focused on Creativity

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The Challenge
The original SCAD.edu website evolved from several different content management systems
(CMS), but with the rapid growth of its digital presence on campus, the university felt that
multiple platforms were too difficult to manage. Everything was a one-off, and SCAD had
limited means of reusing design elements.
So the university began its search for a platform that would serve as a foundation for future
growth—one that supported innovation and rapid design development. Further, SCAD has
become known for its signature events, including the annual student fashion show SCAD
Style and the annual fine and contemporary art show deFINE Art, and was looking for a way
to quickly build and launch engaging microsites to support those initiatives.
The Solution
After testing Drupal 7 on a few smaller sites, SCAD decided on the modular, open source
platform for SCAD.edu. The school worked on the web development and design, and
delivered the site.
“We felt we could move quicker with Drupal,” says Eddie Edenfield, Technical Director
of Interactive Services at SCAD. “After starting with smaller sites, we decided to build
SCAD.edu with smarter, goal-driven objectives, and Drupal fit the bill. Over an eight-
month process, we rebuilt everything from the ground up.”
When developing a new concept, the SCAD.edu team prefers to test and iterate
continually. Acquia Cloud supports that creative process. It handles the behind-the-
scenes infrastructure, so SCAD doesn’t have to worry about servers and hardware.
Instead, the university can simply focus on creating a great website. So they don’t have
to go live too soon, Acquia’s workflow feature lets SCAD conveniently stage and test
designs before releasing them to production.
The Results
Today, SCAD.edu is a sleek and progressive site that appeals to prospective students,
other academic institutions, and a global community. SCAD built the site using a
combination of modules to achieve responsive design, including panels, pictures,
breakpoints, a Bootstrap base theme, and more. This ensures optimal viewing on any
device, including mobile.
The university also gained a new level of agility and efficiency with its new web platform. For
instance, as the interactive team builds microsites to support signature events, SCAD has
been able to bring them all under the SCAD.edu umbrella. Sharing a single code base has
created a streamlined design-and-build process and efficiencies across the entire process.
“We were able to take seven or eight of these events, and using Drupal modules and
hooks, quickly create a visually unique experience within the framework,” says Ian Leslie,
Executive Director of Interactive Services for SCAD.
Recently, SCAD took advantage of Acquia Site Factory’s multisite capability to launch a
Chinese/English multilingual site for its Hong Kong location.
SCAD’s new website is an extensible solution that fits into the school’s growth strategy.
Built by creative individuals for a creative community, it is an artistic and functional
success—all backed by the reliability and security of Acquia.
“We’re getting projects out the door quicker, focusing on our recruitment goals, and
thinking in ways we never thought possible,” says Leslie.
SKU 0460-150113
“After starting with
smaller sites, we decided
to build SCAD.edu with
smarter, goal-driven
objectives in mind, and
Drupal fit the bill.”
— Eddie Edenfield, Technical Director
of Interactive Services at SCAD
Savannah College
of Art and Design
ŽŽ SCAD.edu
ŽŽ Drupal user since 2011
ŽŽ Acquia client since 2013
Success Enabled
With…
ŽŽ Acquia Cloud Enterprise off-site hosting