Led design and content direction for a national security website

A public front door for national security work#

The Global Security Directorate is one of the largest and most visible organizations at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Its work spans nuclear threat reduction, intelligence, space, defense, cybersecurity, and energy security, and its website is the public face of all of it — for partners, for prospective hires, and for the wider national security community.

Leading the design and content#

As project manager, I took the lead on the site's design direction and content. The goal was to create something unique for the directorate within tight constraints, both technical and the Lab's brand standards.

The directorate needed unique art to capture the scary, technical nature of global security: shiny, but apocalyptic. The technical constraints were just as specific. We could only build on Drupal, without template-level access, so we used a code injector to customize everything except the navigation, all while making the site look like a sister site to llnl.gov.

Because the directorate's work is high-stakes, the site drew close review at every level. Delivering it meant coordinating across program areas, each with its own leadership and expectations, while holding one consistent standard of quality across the whole site.

What we delivered#

The finished site is built on Drupal 10 and organizes a large, complex body of work so visitors can find their way into it:

1. Six program areas — Nuclear Threat Reduction, Intelligence, Space, Defense, Cyber & Infrastructure Security, and Energy Security — each with its own landing page.
2. Roughly 25 sub-program pages, surfaced through a navigation menu that exposes that depth without overwhelming a first-time visitor.
3. Photography of the directorate's people and labs, with descriptive alt text and captions.
4. Clear paths to the directorate's leadership, career opportunities, and internships.

You can visit the site at gs.llnl.gov.