The competitive advantage of creative spaces

Last week the website of Yamauchi №10 Family Office made the rounds. It’s a great website — isometric scrolling! Voxel animations! Music!

It’s hard to find websites like this. Arguably, for good reason. Most of the time you just want to find information, complete a transaction, fill out a form. Having your bank website flash lights and play a siren at you every time you schedule a bill payment would get old fast. Quirky features slow everything down, and they’re not great for mobile users, security or accessibility.

And yet, as fun one-off projects, weird, creative websites are some of my favorite things on the internet. It’s so rare that I find spaces that are enjoyable to inhabit on the platform-dominated web. Everything on Facebook, YouTube, et al is templated. Creators are limited to uploading a profile picture, writing a text description, and maybe choosing a background color. You won’t find much surprise or delight.

It’s a real shame, because surprise and delight are powerful tools for attracting attention. For creators, unique design and presentation can be a competitive advantage, making you stand out from the same-y expanse of text boxes and vector drawings.

Big platforms can’t allow this kind of creativity, because they’re built for scale. Every item, whether it’s a post, a video…