Build From the Story Out

Most websites don't fail because of bad design. They fail because they don’t have anything of substance to say.

I came to website design from two fields that have nothing to do with it: sustainability in architecture and food writing. But they both pointed me in the same direction.

Working in sustainability meant I spent a lot of time thinking about consequences. A building that doesn't consider how it affects the people inside it, or the community around it, is just a pretty shell. Every decision radiates outward. The question was never just 'does this look good?' but 'does it actually say something?'

A website works the same way. People know within seconds whether it’s superficial or has real consequence.

It’s tempting to lead with an offer: a list of services, a call to action, a price. But a homepage that opens with a transaction before it's established any trust is like walking into a building and immediately hitting a sales desk. You haven't been welcomed. You don't know where you are yet. The first thing a visitor needs to understand is who they're dealing with and why it matters. Something that says: there's a person here, with a point of view, and they know what they're doing.

Food writing taught me how to listen for the story. Writing about new restaurants meant sitting with chefs and owners at the beginning of something, helping them bring a vision they'd been carrying around for years into the world.

That's the same conversation I have at the start of every web project. The first question is never about services or credentials. It's about feeling: what do you want someone to experience the moment they land on your site? From there, the conversation travels backward. Why that feeling? Where does it come from? Usually, there's a moment, a decision, a conviction that started everything. That's the story. Everything else is just information.

The businesses that get it right are the ones willing to slow down, figure out their story, and build from there.