"He said no to us twice before we figured out what we actually needed. In hindsight, that saved the project."
projects / verdant studio
Portfolio site for a creative agency.
Verdant is a creative agency. Their previous site was over-designed — heavy animations, complex navigation, slow load times. The work was getting lost behind the site trying to be clever about itself.
The brief that emerged from the intake was simple: get out of the way. A static site with a clean grid, fast image loading, and nothing competing with the portfolio pieces themselves.
Performance scores in the high nineties on first load. SEO in place without compromising the visual language. The agency has picked up two new clients who specifically mentioned finding them through search.
what was done
Reviewed their existing portfolio pieces and identified which projects to lead with and how to frame them for both humans and search engines.
Built with Astro. Images optimized and lazy-loaded. No unnecessary JavaScript. Performance was a design constraint, not an afterthought.
Structured data for the agency and individual projects. Meta and Open Graph configured for sharing. No compromise on the visual design to achieve it.
The team can add new projects without touching code. Documentation written clearly enough that they haven't needed to ask a question since launch.
"He said no to us twice before we figured out what we actually needed. In hindsight, that saved the project."