Build Awwwards Quality Sites

Build Awwwards-Quality Sites

Build a cohesive, memorable site whose visual idea, media, typography, and motion tell the same story. Treat “Awwwards quality” as an acceptance bar, never as an award or recognition claim.

1. Set the art direction

• Inspect the user's reference evidence completely before implementation. Extract only high-level traits such as hierarchy, pacing, contrast, image treatment, and motion principles.

• Generate a materially new identity, layout, copy system, imagery, and interaction language. Never reuse, trace, or closely reproduce reference assets, screenshots, source code, identity, or copy.

• Use Aura.build top asset imagery only when the user requests it or it is relevant and available. Treat it as high-level inspiration, not an asset library.

• Select and name at least one compatible installed web-design skill. Follow the smallest relevant set and avoid combining unrelated aesthetic systems.

• Write a compact direction before coding: visual thesis, hero focal asset, type hierarchy, color system, section sequence, motion narrative, chosen smooth-scroll engine, Three.js decision, and asset provenance plan.

2. Build an honest asset system

• Generate original hero or project imagery when it materially improves the concept. Use appropriately licensed media when it is stronger, and keep provenance in the site source.

• Do not draw illustrations with model-authored SVG, CSS, or canvas paths. Use original generated or appropriately licensed transparent PNG cutouts for illustrative elements. Simple authored brand marks, interface icons, data graphics, and a justified Three.js shader canvas are allowed.

• Use photographs for every avatar. Prefer provided or appropriately licensed photos; never ship initials, illustrated heads, faceless silhouettes, or generated people presented as real customers, staff, or endorsers.

• Use Solar icons through Iconify for interface symbols. Use Iconify SVG Logos only for legitimate real-company marks in truthful contexts. Use Logo Ipsum only for explicitly disclosed fictional brand specimens, never as customer proof. Omit a logo wall when no honest proof exists.

• Provide deliberate aspect ratios, crop behavior, alt text, loading behavior, and missing-media fallbacks. Avoid generic stock imagery, copied mockups, watermarks, and decorative media without a narrative role.

3. Compose the hero

• Make the first viewport the site's strongest authored moment. Combine a clear message and CTA with original imagery, video, pointer-responsive interaction, or a justified Three.js scene.

• Create a composed GSAP intro sequence for the hero. Keep navigation, primary message, and CTA readable and usable before the animation completes.

• Make pointer effects additive. Support touch, keyboard, coarse pointers, window blur, and visibility changes without leaving the interface in an incomplete state.

• Design a static first frame that remains complete when JavaScript, media playback, WebGL, or motion is unavailable.

4. Build the motion system

• Use GSAP as the primary animation system.

• Evaluate Lenis and Locomotive Scroll, then choose exactly one as the site's sole smooth-scroll engine. Never install or initialize both. Connect the chosen engine correctly to GSAP ScrollTrigger, refresh measurements after media and font changes, and destroy it during cleanup.

• Bypass smooth scrolling and scrubbed timelines under prefers-reduced-motion: reduce. Render final states immediately instead of merely shortening animations.

• Choreograph the page section by section. Reveal major headings word by word with a restrained stagger, then sequence supporting copy and media.

• Preserve an unsplit accessible name for staggered text. Hide decorative split words from assistive technology, never split links or meaningful inline markup, and keep the unsplit content visible without JavaScript.

• Use CSS for simple hover, focus, and tap states. Reserve ScrollTrigger for justified scrubbed or pinned sequences and avoid multiple systems controlling the same property.

5. Add Three.js only with purpose

• Use Three.js and custom WebGL shaders when spatial depth, texture transition, displacement, or pointer response materially supports the art direction. Do not add a shader as ornamental background noise.

• Give the canvas one clear responsibility and keep it subordinate to semantic content and controls.

• Cap device pixel ratio, pause rendering offscreen or when the document is hidden, throttle pointer input, and avoid per-frame allocation.

• Provide a static poster and replace the canvas entirely under reduced motion or WebGL failure.

• Dispose animation frames, observers, event listeners, render targets, textures, geometries, materials, and the renderer. Handle context loss without breaking page content.

6. Meet the quality bar

• Build a complete semantic page, not a hero-only concept. Include responsive navigation, coherent section progression, concrete conversion content, final CTA, footer, robust form or control states when present, and visible keyboard focus.

• Require a distinct art-directed idea, memorable first viewport, disciplined typography and spacing, intentional image crops, authored transitions, and refined hover, focus, active, loading, disabled, error, touch, and reduced-motion behavior.

• Preserve performance with responsive media, lazy loading below the fold, bounded transforms, limited blur, capped canvas work, and no continuously animated offscreen content.

• Reject generic gradient blobs, ornamental bento grids, glass applied everywhere, stock component layouts, fake testimonials, invented partnerships, logo-wall theater, and motion with no narrative role.

• Never describe the result as award-winning or Awwwards-recognized unless the user provides verifiable evidence.

7. Validate before handoff

• Run the production build and fix every failure.

• Check the page at desktop and mobile sizes when browser validation is requested or needed to resolve a blocker.

• Verify keyboard navigation, visible focus, touch behavior, content with JavaScript unavailable, static media fallbacks, and prefers-reduced-motion behavior.

• Check that only one smooth-scroll engine is installed and initialized, ScrollTrigger integration is correct, and all animation and WebGL resources clean up.

• Search rendered content and source for placeholders, copied reference identity, unsupported claims, misleading logos, uncredited media, and inaccessible split text.

• Report the chosen web-design skill, asset sources, motion stack, Three.js decision, validation performed, and any remaining limitation.