harmonicdesigners.com

Designing and building the studio's own site, under the exact constraints a real client project would have.

Client type: Self — the studio's own site
Scope: Full bilingual marketing site + cart/checkout, 52 routes
Timeline: Per the build schedule
Stack: Astro (static), Preact islands, Tailwind CSS, a single PHP endpoint pair — no Node runtime at hosting

Approach

The brief was blunt: shared FTP hosting, no server runtime, a hard cap of 15 raster images, and a dark, distinctive visual system that couldn't lean on stock photography or a template kit to look credible. Every constraint that would normally be a compromise became the argument instead — a site this fast, this accessible, and this considered, built without a server doing any of the work at request time, is itself the pitch.

The harder problem wasn't technical. It was honesty: how do you build trust with no client roster, no testimonials, and no track record to point to? The answer here is structural, not written — publish the price everywhere, including inside the navigation, and let the measured performance of the page you're reading stand in for a testimonial no one could yet have given.