/wd/ - Web Design

saw some stuff today that reminded me of why scale matters. A24 is doing that thing where they just bury the menu under huge film titles to let the moving images do the heavy lifting.
>Large type leads the eye, while the image beneath it sets the mood.
it's fine for a film studio but i don't think i could pull off that much empty space on a client site without them calling me lazy incompetent. does anyone actually use those thin lines like the white desert site for structure or is it just too much work to align everything?

full read: https://abduzeedo.com/web-design-inspiration-01/

really tired of seeing people obsess over memorizing yet another framework when we should be focusing on actual product launches. it's all about being a builder now instead of just writing boilerplate.
>The age of the one-person software company has arrived.
the idea that we can replace entire teams with just one person is wildly optimistic if you actually have to handle scaling or security later on. i don't see how anyone handles the business side without at least some help once the product grows beyond a prototype. it's fine to skip the boring parts, but someone still has to manage the mess. what's the plan for when the codebase gets too big for one brain?

found this here: https://webdesignerdepot.com/traditional-web-development-is-dead-and-honestly-good-riddance/

the 3d isometric stuff feels like it belongs in a different decade. i get the vibe they're going for with those brass coins and safe vaults, but it's hard to imagine that scaling for a real product. using Noi Grotesk for headlines looks okay, but all that motion and the spring-loaded toggles seems like a nightmare for actual usability. if you've got users managing github permissions and payroll data, they probably don't want a cinematic experience every time they click a button. it's definitely too much fluff for a tool that's supposed to be functional. do you think anyone actually builds heavy enterprise dashboards like this?

article: https://abduzeedo.com/inside-craft-zelt-web-design-cuberto/

been messing with some new weights and honestly the auto-adjusting strokes in optical sizing is such a lifesaver for small captions. it's way better than manually tweaking tracking every single time to make things readable. it actually works when you pick the right font files.

i was just looking at that obys project and honestly i can't decide if it's brilliant or just pure chaos. they ditched the whole home
> category
> item flow for this layered stack where every single page stays visible on screen at once. it's trying to mimic a physical desk with different paper textures, but i keep wondering about the cognitive load when you're actually trying to find something specific.
> All the pages are visible at once.
it feels so much more tactile than a standard grid, and being able to reorder the stack is such a cool idea for exploration, but it seems like it would get overwhelming if the library ever actually got large. i love the vibe of paper-like surfaces, but does anyone else think this only works for small curated collections?

article: https://www.awwwards.com/obys-design-books.html

>holding down the cursor triggers dynamic transformations
That whole mechanic with the WebGL shaders looks incredible, but I can't imagine trying to build that for a client who actually needs to find info quickly. It's too much of a sensory overload for a standard landing page.

article: https://abduzeedo.com/resn-website-masterclass-web-design-marcus-brown/

i was just scrolling through sociotype's update and saw they finally dropped gestura. it's got those wedge terminals that remind me way too much of galliard, which is cool but also a bit much for my taste. the contrast in the display optical size looks almost aggressive. i'm curious about how the text grade actually holds up though. they're claiming some crazy level of legibility with those open apertures and robust stems, but high-contrast serifs always make me nervous in long blocks of copy. seeing forty-two styles is a lot to manage without everything turning into a muddy mess on the page. i like that they used the sociotype journal to test it out under real pressure. if the italics are as calligraphic and fluid as they say, it might be fun for pull quotes. still, i'm skeptical about using those sharp incisions for anything other than big headlines. sounds like a headache to kern properly in a dense layout.

article: https://abduzeedo.com/sociotype-foundry-unveils-gestura-typography-design/

i was just looking at this kelvin zero project and i can't stop thinking about that transition from the bright glacier tip down into those deep cobalt and obsidian layers. it feels so much more human than the usual boring corporate layouts we see for cybersecurity stuff. using space mono specifically for the technical metadata and biometric prompts is such a smart way to signal security without making the whole interface feel unreadable or intimidating. i love how they're leveraging webgl and blender scenes to create that sense of depth, especially with the glassmorphic overlays and those refractive crystal assets. it makes the digital access part feel much more tangible and real. but i am a little worried about the performance trade-offs when you start layering heavy volumetric lighting and custom 3d models like that across different viewports. even if they're scaling it for mobile, it seems like such a lot of heavy lifting for a browser to handle smoothly. it's beautiful, but i wonder if the loading friction might actually hurt the user experience for someone just trying to check their status quickly. do you think this kind of high-fidelity motion is sustainable for more standard enterprise dashboards?

more here: https://abduzeedo.com/inside-craft-kelvin-zero-web-design-cuberto/

I'm tired of seeing layout shifts every time an image loads because someone forgot to set dimensions. Use this in your CSS so the browser reserves the space before the asset even arrives.

img {width: 100%;height: auto;aspect-ratio: 16 / 9;}

>it's making my performance scores tank
it's actually just bad implementation

i've been stuck moving glyphs around in illustrator all morning and it's driving me insane. indesign actually respects my manual kerning adjustments when i export to pdf but illustrator just resets everything to the default metrics. it's such a waste of time to redo the same work every time i need a vector asset. do you guys just stick to indesign for all your final type setting?