In today’s door we return to DrupalCon Nara, where Elliott Mower of Mediacurrent, describes himself as a non-engineer who became an “accidental designer” of the new starter theme for Drupal Canvas.
The talk introduces the idea that modern Drupal Site Templates are more than just themes: they are flexible foundations that allow non-developers to build, customize, and evolve websites without deep technical knowledge. Using Drupal CMS 2.0 and Canvas, tasks that once required expertise in Composer, CSS, or front-end development can now be done visually and intuitively. He emphasizes that creators are being empowered to move from “what if” to “why not,” even if they are not engineers.
The presentation explains how Mediacurrent approached building a design system for Drupal, clarifying what a design system is and is not. Rather than being a static style guide or UI kit, a design system is a living set of rules that balances consistency with flexibility. The team researched existing systems and realised most lacked strong content components, which are essential for content-driven websites. This led them to focus on real-world use cases and “theme personalities” to ensure the system worked across many different types of site.
This work evolved into Mercury, a modern starter kit for Drupal CMS. Mercury is not a finished theme, but a starting point designed to be forked, customized, and extended. It integrates Figma, Storybook, Tailwind, and single-directory components, making it accessible to both developers and non-developers. From Mercury, the team created site templates like Byte (for SaaS and technical sites) and Lumen (for nonprofits), demonstrating how the same core components can support very different appearances.
The talk concludes with a live demonstration showing how non-developers can create entirely new components using tools like Cursor and Tailwind UI, without writing traditional Drupal code. By borrowing existing patterns and adapting them within Canvas, users can quickly build and customise sites. The overall message is that Mercury and Site Templates are meant to be hacked, evolved, and reused – lowering barriers, speeding up creation, and making Drupal more approachable for a wider audience.
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