How I built this site
experiment · this very website
01 — The concept decision
The bet: if the fiction holds — if visiting the site feels like being inside a live design file — then the craft argument makes itself before a single case study is opened. That meant the metaphor couldn’t be a skin. The chrome says “editing.” The selection box around my name is real and draggable. The journal is literally labeled as an object in the file. Every page keeps the fiction load-bearing.
02 — The scale, honestly counted
Five case studies, a physics playground, a command palette, a guided-tour cat, and a three-view journal, and the whole thing still ships as one HTML file, one stylesheet, and one script. Constraint was the point: every feature had to be cheap enough to own forever.
03 — Built with AI, on purpose
This site is my proof-of-workflow for designing with AI. I built it pairing with Claude the way I’d pair with a senior engineer: I set the direction, taste, and references — screen recordings of sites I admired, annotated screenshots, sometimes a hand-drawn selection box — and the AI turned direction into working code I could react to in minutes.
The result of that loop is on my about page as a card called “builds with AI,” and this site is the receipt. The thinking, direction, and final call on every pixel stayed mine. The typing, mostly, did not.
04 — The systems under the fiction
05 — What broke, and what it taught me
CSS grid auto-placement refuses to walk backwards, which silently shoved my hand-placed scatter into phantom rows until every card got an explicit row assignment. A gradient mask meant to fade a thumbnail rail clipped a hand-drawn selection cube to literal invisibility — it took painting the stroke bright red to find the body. Measuring 35 image positions on every scroll event was fine right up until it wasn’t; positions are now cached and invalidated only when layout can actually change.
COMMENTS (2)
Lazyleaf
“Naram is an awesome designer that has helped us deliver a multitude of projects for our clients (website design, graphics & product design). I enjoy his hands-on approach, the consulting that comes along with his services, and the accountability demonstrated throughout our collaboration.”
Goodwood Tree
“Naram is an excellent web designer, who excelled in delivering a quality product in an efficient and effective manner. He was specific in understanding my goals, and also kind enough to explain some of the finer points of web design. His prices were reasonable for the top-notch work he performs, and I’d 10/10 recommend him for any web design needs you may have!”