How a bold homepage design can instantly win new clients

Introduction

Most studio homepages open with a welcome. Welcomes are polite and they are worthless: they use the most valuable space on the site to say something true of every studio that has ever existed.

What bold actually means

Bold is not a larger typeface. Bold is committing to a claim specific enough that some visitors will decide you are not for them — which is exactly what makes the rest lean in.

• Name the work you want, not the work you will accept.
• Lead with one project, at full width, rather than a grid.
• Put the strongest proof above the fold, not in a lower section.

The first five seconds

A visitor decides whether to keep scrolling before they have read a full sentence. That decision is made on typography, hierarchy and one image — so those three deserve more of your time than the four sections underneath them combined.

Bold is not busy

The two get confused constantly. A page with six competing animations is busy; a page with one enormous statement and nothing else on the screen is bold. Only one of them is memorable an hour later.

Conclusion

A homepage that tries to appeal to everyone appeals to nobody in particular, and nobody in particular has a budget.

Pick a position, say it in the largest type on the page, and let the work underneath carry the argument.