The Future in Black was built for Joy Fennell to hold a story that needed more than a standard portfolio site. Our goal from the start was to make the site feel archival and alive at once, part digital exhibit, part living brand presence, so every design decision was made to support that feeling rather than just present information.

We started with structure: how should a visitor move through this content, and what pace should that movement have? That question shaped our use of Finish Layer's block animations. Text reveals on scroll, so the story unfolds in beats instead of arriving all at once, closer to reading a book than scrolling a website. Images use hover interactions to invite a second look without pulling focus from the words around them.

From there we layered in movement. Shapes transform and shift position as the visitor scrolls, adding depth and a sense of motion that a static layout couldn't carry. This was the piece that took the most iteration, getting the timing and scale of these transforms to feel intentional rather than gimmicky meant testing several versions before landing on the current pacing.

Typography carried a lot of the brand's identity, so we uploaded Million and Inter Tight rather than relying on Squarespace's native font library. Million gives the site its editorial voice in headlines, and Inter Tight keeps body copy clean and legible against it.

The result is a site built on Squarespace's foundation, using Finish Layer's native tools alongside custom CSS and JS, pushed toward something that reads as custom, editorial, and specific to one person's story rather than a repeatable formula.

@Squarespace

Hey @Golden Launch this is awesome but it looks like the link you included in the comments isn't working. make sure the link is active in order for your submission to be judged 😃

Currently designing and building a custom web app for a friend that works as an alternative to platforms like PhotoShelter and SmugMug.

It’s becoming easier for people to replace expensive monthly tools with products built specifically around their own workflow, features, and business needs.

Need something custom built for the way you work? Let’s talk.

A photographer-specific alternative to PhotoShelter makes a lot of sense, those platforms feel bloated if you only need galleries and client proofing. Are you building the storage/CDN piece yourself or wiring up something like S3 behind it?