Why the site looks like this

August 19, 2026

The site is live. Let me be upfront: the morandi greys, the watercolor, the aurora, the kai-style headings — all personal taste. There is no strategy story to tell; I simply like them. What’s worth writing about is the technical decisions underneath, once the taste was settled.

Dark mode is not a bonus, it’s the passing grade

A big share of a technical audience lives in dark interfaces. Shipping light-only means writing off half your readers’ first impression. So the rule here: every color token and every image carries a complete light and dark pair. The watercolor aurora on the homepage is a daytime mist-blue aurora in light mode and a night lake in dark mode — same family, each at its best, not one image with the brightness cranked.

Motion has exactly one job: make the aurora move

A static aurora is just a picture. I wanted the whole page to carry that flowing-aurora feeling, so every bit of motion serves it: the cover painting breathes in a slow push-in, the aurora bands brighten and dim like the real thing, and a band of light sweeps slowly across the background — cloud shadow on light paper, moonlight in dark mode — surviving page navigation without a cut.

The first version failed: a layer of colored fog that technically animated but visually read as zero; turned up, it just muddied the dark theme. Tearing it down left one principle: effects should stay close to nature — movement borrowed from natural phenomena (breathing light, drifting mist, moonlight on water) at nature’s own pace; one metaphor at a time (the aurora), slow, and light.

Closing

Honestly, this site was built with me as art director and an AI executing; taste can’t be outsourced, execution can — a topic that deserves its own post. Every release passes a verification script before it ships; nothing goes out the door unverified.

Curious how the site is built? The technical write-up is here: Anatomy of a Four-Page Site.