What does does Aten Design Group do?

Here at Aten Design Group, we’re basically a handful of designers and programmers who are all passionate about what we do. We all dig the outdoors, snowboard in the winter, and ride bikes to work when the weather’s nice (which is often, in Denver). And we design really amazing websites. We also create online games and build Flash applications—but that’s probably a story for a different time.

To give a little more background, Aten opened for business in 2000, and over the past 9 years has had the opportunity to help some really exciting organizations tell important stories online. We are particularly excited about working with clients whose core mission involves positive social change.

How did you get involved with Drupal?

We got started with Drupal a few years ago when a client asked us to review a handful of open-source content management systems and provide a recommendation. We were especially impressed with Drupal’s flexible theme layer, modular architecture, and incredibly active community. We of course made Drupal our recommendation, then built the client’s website in Drupal, and have been building Drupal sites ever since.

You guys are known as a design shop and for doing great user interfaces. What are some of Drupal’s strengths from a design standpoint that have led you to rely on it for your work?

As I mentioned above, we were drawn to Drupal, among other reasons, for its powerful theme layer. We’ve found very few limitations with what can be done, from a design perspective, with Drupal. If anything, we’ve had trouble in the opposite direction – deciding which of the dozens of ways to do something might be the best way for a particular design problem. Additionally, Drupal has a passionate, vocal community that is committed to good software architecture and continuing to push and improve functionality. Before Drupal, we hadn’t found a CMS product that struck quite the same balance.

What are you most looking forward to about DrupalCon DC?

I’m really excited to have a chance to meet up with people in the community – some old faces, some new. And I hear the party is amazing!