Learn more
Not the studio site we had literally been talking about thirty seconds ago. The Lumon one. The one I made for myself. Two years ago. For a fictional corporation from a TV show. (Severance on Apple TV, in case you live under a rock).
There was quiet feeling in my chest the first time I realize the project people keep bringing up is the one I built for myself two years ago. At first it stings slightly. I had done a lot of work since then. I had built real sites for real founders. I had poured real strategy into real problems. But this is the one they remember.
And yes, I know, Serverance was everywhere at the time. It was the show everyone was talking about. But the trend has long moved on. And somehow the Lumon site was still memorable. That started to teach me something.
So what makes this one project so memorable that people still bring it up?
Client work proves you can execute a brief. A passion project proves your taste before anyone even requests for it.
One of the clients I booked after the site launched was the founder of a creative design studio. I had sent them a cold DM with a proposal. They replied yes. On the call they said they had seen my reel breaking down the Lumon website process, and that was that. They did not go through my portfolio in any detail. They had already made up their mind. (And the thing they had made up their mind about was not the polish. It was the thinking.)
Taste is the one thing you cannot fake. It is the thing clients are actually trying to filter for, even when they do not know they are filtering.
The Lumon site was not focusing on the aesthetic of the show. I built an entire concept around the severance procedure itself. (I would go in detail about the procedure but I would hate to give anyone a spoiler).
Now the audience could come to the website, understand the legacy of Lumon Industries, understand the process, and begin their journey. A whole product world built inside a fictional one.
The spine of the whole idea came from one line, “A brighter tomorrow begins with a focused today.” Said by Kier Eagan. I read that line and realised it was a great metaphor. Everything about Severance is gloomy. A brighter tomorrow was the darkest possible promise.
So I translated the metaphor into motion. As the reader scrolled, a spark of dark blue rays followed them down the page, guiding them into the next section where the site said “Your work self thrives. Your outside self rests. Neither shall ever burden the other.” Every phrase on the site was pulled from the show and placed where it carried the weight of a strategic decision.
That is the work most clients actually need. They do not hire you to answer a brief. They hire you to find the brief underneath the brief.
Nobody pays for the decision to translate one line of a TV show into a scroll animation that carries a metaphor all the way down the page. It does not make the site load faster. It does not make it “work better.”
But it is definitely the thing that makes every piece of the site feel like it is part of the same thought.
Care is what produces coherence. Coherence is what clients can feel even when they cannot name it.
Every person who booked me after Lumon was responding to the fact that I cared enough to make every small decision serve one unified vision. They did not want a good web designer. They wanted someone who would care about their thing the way I cared about a fictional corporation from a TV show.
That is what they were actually booking. Most people are spending their time making a lot of things instead of one thing fully considered. The Lumon site keeps working because every decision in it was made with care that was not negotiated away by a budget, a timeline, or a client who “just wants it live.”
Care compounds. The project you make for no one, with no brief and no budget and no deadline, if it is fully considered, keeps paying you back for years. A friend of a friend brings it up at a random hangout. A founder DMs you about it. A reel from two years ago still introduces your craft.
This is the return on the work that excites you.
