CMAC: a clear, credible home for a world class medicines manufacturing hub
TwoFifths Design, a website design and development studio in Edinburgh, designed and built cmac.ac.uk for CMAC, an international hub for research, training and industry collaboration in medicines manufacturing. The brief was a fast, structured platform that works as hard for a prospective PhD candidate as it does for an industry partner.
The brief
Three priorities drove the build: communicate CMAC’s mission, surface facilities and services, and make industry engagement obvious. Those goals now anchor the architecture across About, Research, Facilities & Services, Industry Engagement, People, News, and Events.
Co-design with the CMAC team
We ran focused workshops with research leads, facilities, training, and industry engagement. Together we mapped journeys for four core users: prospective partners, current members, researchers, and prospective PhD candidates. The new navigation elevates CMAC’s offer and shortens paths to action: enquire, collaborate, book, or apply.
Built for researchers and industry
Research programmes are grouped to show impact and speed up discovery of methods and collaborations.
Facilities & services pages translate complex capability into clear service cards, from X-ray and imaging to process development.
Industry engagement explains membership tiers, showcases partners, and links to case studies and translation pathways.
Talent pipeline content gives CEDAR CDT a first-class presence with themes, cohorts, and challenges.
Content that tells the CMAC story
We created flexible templates for announcements, events, and long-form impact stories so the team can publish quickly and consistently. Recent items show the consortium’s momentum and global growth.
A pragmatic, component-based CMS
Editors manage pages through reusable blocks for hero statements, KPI highlights, tabbed specs, and rich media. This keeps publishing costs predictable while preserving design consistency at scale.
Outcomes
Clear routes for partners to engage and join the consortium.
Faster access to facility information and service enquiries.
Stronger narrative around CMAC’s mission, people, and impact.
What’s next
We’re tracking navigation patterns and search terms to refine journeys. On the roadmap: richer partner profiles, smarter cross-linking between research themes and services, and lightweight “book a capability consult” flows to accelerate collaboration.
Building a research or industry hub? Let’s make it work harder for funding, partnerships, and pipeline.
Visit the site: cmac.ac.uk
