When we made the redesign, the changelog had way more red lines than green. Honestly, that was the whole point. The biggest wins came from just deleting stuff.
The cyan was doing way too much
The old layout leaned heavily on a bright cyan accent. It looked cool by itself, but it was constantly fighting everything else on the screen. It distracted from our project screenshots and made building new components a total pain because we always had to figure out how to make them "work" with the cyan.
Getting rid of it completely fixed the issue. The base layout is way cleaner now, the actual content does the heavy lifting, and the one warm accent we kept actually means something when it pops up.
Three fonts pretending to be a system
We realized we were running a display face, a couple of random sans options, and a serif that snuck in for "special" moments. That's not a type system, that's just four fonts taking turns being chaotic.
We collapsed it all down to the essentials:
- One display face for headlines
- One sans font for literally everything else
- A single serif accent, used super rarely and on purpose
Fewer fonts means faster page loads, way fewer layout shifts, and a site that actually sounds like one cohesive group instead of total chaos.
Subtraction is a feature
If someone notices the typography before they notice our actual work, the typography is too loud.
We did add some real features too. Finally put up a privacy policy, terms, and built an internal admin dashboard with a custom API to handle our uploads. But the thing you notice first is what we took away. The site just feels quieter, and quiet reads as confident.
If you guys are staring at a project that feels messy or cluttered, try deleting things before you add more CSS. It's the cheapest redesign you can do.