Every website starts as nothing.
fig. 01 — one pixel · #FF5A1F · 1 × 1
A single ember-coloured pixel glows in an empty dark screen and follows your cursor.
Then it multiplies.
65,536 pixels. Still not a website.
The pixel divides like a cell, again and again, until thousands of pixels fill the screen as an even grid.
Before beauty, a plan.
structure · hierarchy · rhythm
The grid of pixels dims into graph paper and a wireframe of a web page draws itself on top, with labels for the navigation, headline, hero image, cards and footer.
Now take the studio away.
- styles.css
- fonts / 3 families
- colour / 5 tokens
- motion / 65,536 particles
Welcome to my website!!!
Best viewed in Netscape Navigator at 800x600.
You are visitor number 000412.
Click here to see our products
/!\ Under construction /!\
fig. 04 — the same page, with no studio · keep scrolling ↓
restoring styles.css
Let's fix that.
The site announces it will remove its own styles, fonts, colour and motion, then wipes into raw, unstyled 1990s HTML with Times New Roman text and blue links, captioned "This is a website without a studio". It then restores its styles.
Type is the voice.
Inter Tight 100–900 · Instrument Serif Italic · JetBrains Mono
brush the letters with your cursordrag across the letters
The pixels lift off the grid and pour into a giant letter A and a serif italic a, made of tens of thousands of points. The headline's font weight changes as you scroll.
Colour is the mood.
tap a swatch — repaint the universe
The letters burst into a slowly turning galaxy of coloured light. Five colour swatches let you re-tint the whole galaxy.
Motion is the feeling.
(go on — grab one and throw it)(go on — fling one)
Word chips such as ease, spring and momentum fall with real physics and pile up. You can grab and throw them.
Depth turns a page into a place.
every one of these is a website · every one of them different
Yours could be next.
The camera flies forward through a winding canyon of floating browser windows, each showing a different website design, while stars stream past.
Made at the southern tip of Africa.
34.42°S 19.24°E — Overberg, ZA
Seen everywhere.
The stars swarm into a globe of glowing points. It turns to Africa, a beacon lights at the Overberg in South Africa, and arcs reach out to cities around the world.
Ready to get your website built by McArthur Studio?
Everything collapses back into one pixel, which becomes the dot of the McArthur Studio logo.