NEON NOOK
Retro-style Front-End Development
FRONT-END NOSTALGIA EXPLORATION
NEON NOOK
Neon Nook is a personal front-end playground inspired by the joy and messiness of 90s and early 2000s web design. Hand-coded in HTML and CSS with minimal JavaScript (JS), it explores nostalgia, mood-based interfaces, and creative coding beyond traditional portfolio constraints.
Neon Nook is an ongoing front-end exploration and is best experienced on desktop, as it would've been in the 90s and 00s.
FOCUS
Front-End Development
Experimental Interface Design
Visual Storytelling
Nostalgia-Inspired UI
THE CHALLENGE
Today's website design conventions bring uniformity and ease-of-use at the expense of uniqueness and charm. However, 90s and 00s websites had no such conventions which led to confusing, clunky user flows yet encourages individuality and memorability. How can a designer re-create the charm and delightful moments of a 90s website while retaining the clarity of a modern site?
THE INSIGHTS
Encouraging users to explore and play within a interface creates slower, more emotionally attaching moments. Users want to be delighted by aesthetics and surprising interactions while retaining clear next steps and ways back. Additionally, the retro, early web aesthetics still have a place in the field of web design when treated as systematic rather than novelty for novelty's sake.
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As an ongoing project, Neon Nook brings about more learning and reflective moments than a more fixed deliverable timeline.
SCREENS
These screens show the evolution of Neon Nook (from most recent to earliest). For all current screens, explore the live site!
Current landing page featuring a custom animated background created for the site.
Current layout of the Albums page, designed to evoke flipping through physical albums rather than a conventional grid-based layout.
Mid-stage version of the site’s main background and sidebar. This is shown on the Fonts page, where all displayed typefaces are designed by me and available for download.
Early exploration of the site’s main page, focusing on background treatment, overall theming, and sidebar structure.