Unserious

Overview

Unserious is a creative agency whose entire proposition rests on having a distinctive point of view. A generic agency website would have actively undermined the pitch. The brief was a site that reads as editorial rather than corporate — confident enough to be memorable, clear enough to convert.

I designed and developed the complete site in Framer, working directly with the founders on positioning and structure.

The problem

Creative agencies face a specific website tension. Lean too far toward expression and you get a site that wins design awards and generates no enquiries. Lean too far toward conversion and you look like every other agency with a hero, a logo strip and three service cards — which is fatal when your differentiator is taste.

Unserious needed both: a site with genuine personality that still funnels attention toward a conversation.

Scope

End-to-end design and Framer development, including homepage storytelling, services presentation, work showcase, responsive layouts across all breakpoints, and enquiry-focused calls to action.

Approach

I treated the homepage as an argument rather than a brochure. Each section earns the scroll to the next one: who this is for, what working together looks like, proof it works, and then a direct path to start a conversation. Nothing sits on the page purely for decoration.

The visual language leans editorial — generous scale, deliberate typographic contrast, and layouts that break the predictable grid at controlled moments. That expressiveness is load-bearing for an agency selling creative judgement, but it is applied selectively. The sections that do conversion work stay quiet and legible.

Responsive behaviour got particular attention. Expressive desktop layouts frequently collapse into something generic on mobile, which is where a meaningful share of first impressions now happen. Each breakpoint was designed rather than allowed to reflow, so the personality survives the phone.

Underneath, the build uses reusable Framer components. New case studies and service pages can be assembled without rebuilding layouts, and the team can publish without touching design.

Handover

The site was handed over with a documented component structure and a walkthrough session. The team edits copy, swaps images and publishes new work independently — I stay involved for the things that move the numbers, not for copy changes.

Building for expression without design debt

Expressive sites usually rot. Every new page becomes a bespoke layout decision, the visual language drifts, and within a year the site needs another rebuild. Avoiding that was an explicit goal, not an afterthought.

The answer was to treat the expressiveness as a system rather than a series of one-off decisions. Scale relationships, spacing rhythms and the specific moments where the grid is allowed to break are all defined once and reused. A new page assembled from those parts inherits the personality automatically — nobody has to recreate it, and nobody can accidentally dilute it.

Performance under expressive layouts

Ambitious layouts carry a performance cost if they are built carelessly. Large type, full-bleed imagery and motion all add weight. Each was checked against what it contributed: images are served responsively at the sizes actually needed, motion is kept to transforms that the browser can composite cheaply, and nothing animates above the fold before the page has settled.

The practical test is whether the site feels immediate on a mid-range phone over a normal connection, not whether it scores well on a fast laptop. That is the standard the build was held to.

Outcome

An agency site that looks like the work it is selling, with a conversion path that does not apologise for existing.

Services used: website design and Framer development.