AI can be professional, but it can’t come up with silly little details on websites
imagining a fun wedding website, sites with personality, and flowers instead of cookie banners
Hello friends,
I write this newsletter after it’s been a while since the last one. But the garden has kept growing, although slowly.
A non wedding-y wedding site
I’m lately thinking about several things related to personal websites, and I’m soon starting some wedding website design projects, which is exciting. While waiting for these projects to start, I wanted to dip my toes into the world of wedding websites and designed a template called Clara & Jonas, which was very fun to create!
I wanted to play around with a layout, design and style that isn’t classicly wedding-y, but that instead has a different feel and is fun too. I also was waiting for a project to incorporate a fun and interactive section, like a game of sorts. So, I created a section at the bottom of the site where the guests can design an outfit for the couple’s pet:
I love this kind of silly details on websites, especially when the site’s visitors get to interact with it and co-create something with the site. These sorts of things make a website truly memorable, and a wedding website is perfect for these fun, kooky moments!
Professional design and design with personality
On a similar topic, earlier this month I wrote about how, when a business or person’s goal with their website (or design in general) is solely to look professional, they end up looking like anyone else. But when they express themselves authentically through design, that’s when they stand out and the design really reflects their work, values, personality, and humanness1.
I include some websites I love as examples of how personality-filled design creates a more memorable experience:
’s, ’s and Jackie Liu’s personal websites, as well as CONG’s site, a Vietnamese restaurant in Stockholm.
That being said, websites with just professional design, obviously, have their place too. I don’t think a whimsical and cute design would work for a dermatologist, for example.
(Wait, or would it?)
Analytics can’t reflect meaningful goals
Last week, I reflected on website analytics, the ones that my website’s backend shows me even if I didn’t ask. I try to avoid looking at them because I don’t want them to get in the way of the goals I actually have for my website, and that analytics can’t give me insight on. Goals like writing something that resonates or inspires, or sharing a project people enjoy.
By not adding third-party analytics that I don’t need, I can also skip having a cookie banner, which would be the very first thing new visitors have to click on.
A (wonderful) exception
I know I just talked about not looking at analytics, but this weekend they did bring me something wonderful! I saw that one of the sources to my website was a Substack publication, so I clicked on the link. It was a post by
that said this about my zine on digital homes 🥹:I beg you to read (scroll through/interact with) the online essay linked above. it is about the concept of a digital home, a website that is not attached to any existing social media, and can be seen as a digital space to exist, create, and share. the whole idea is getting my creative gears churning.
If I could just look at the sources on analytics, and nothing else, that’d be great!
This is it for this week’s letter,
thank you for reading, really.
Núria.
🫐 nabiu website | 🌿 read my garden | 🌐 work with me
The more AI makes everything boring, soulless, “perfect“, etc. the happier I am to see websites that actually show humanness, character, personality.