At Drupal GovCon, Perry Brown tackled a challenge that every stie builder and content team knows too well: image chaos. Mismatched crops, clashing styles, and an ever-growing media library can quickly turn a polished site into a virtual junk drawer.
Perry’s session, From Mess to Masterpiece: Taming Images in Drupal the Thoughtful Way, offered a roadmap for bringing order and intention to how Drupal manages visual content. His approach goes beyond design tweaks, it’s about creating a system that improves both user experience and editorial workflows. Key strategies shared include:
- Designing a flexible system of base image styles that work seamlessly across devices
- Using smart cropping and aspect-ratio variants to repurpose content effectively
- Applying art direction to control focal points and maintain context
- Providing responsive image options to let the browser optimize delivery
- Organizing images into reusable, purpose-built view modes
- Auto-generating image derivatives at upload for efficience
- Simplying the media library with taxonomy-powered virtual folders
What stands out is the balance between developer control and editorial ease. The session underscored that thoughtful image handling isn’t just a technical nicety; it’s a cornerstone of accessibility, performance, and long-term site governance.
For public sector teams, these practices are especially relevant. Federal and state agencies manage vast repositories of visual content, where efficiency and clarity are critical. By adopting strategies like those Perry outlined, agencies can reduce editorial friction, improve user trust, and deliver digital experiences that are consistent and resilient.
You can watch the full session recording here: From Mess to Masterpiece: Taming Images in Drupal the Thoughtful Way
About Mobomo, LLC
Mobomo, a private company headquartered in the D.C. metro area, is a CMMI Dev Level 3, ISO 9001:2015, and CMMC Level 1 provider of digital transformation system integration services. A premier provider of mobile, web, infrastructure, and cloud applications to federal agencies and large enterprises, Mobomo combines leading-edge technology with human-centered design and strategy to craft next generation digital experience. From private sector companies to government agencies, we have amassed deep expertise helping our clients enhance and expand their existing web and mobile suite. Interested in learning more about Mobomo? Take a tour of our capabilities, our portfolio of work, the team members who make our clients look so fantastic, and feel free to reach out with any questions you might have.
