Incredibly clean, great typography and whitespace. Images are top notch, icon animations are subtle yet effective. Call to actions are small but still noticeable. The story telling is on point.

but!

That header gradient animation. We need to talk about it. How does everyone feel about it? To me, it feels distracting enough to render it superfluous. At times, it makes the navigation text in the header difficult to read (very poor contrast). At other times it is distracting and takes away from the main heading.

With a slightly less distracting implementation it would have been a perfect 10/10. But those above two points make the header an 8/10 which would bring the whole page to a 9/10 for me.

I only hold Stripe to a high standard because... well they have absolute geniuses working on these amazing webpages. Ensuring all text is readable is a must.

See failing colour contrast check here: https://imgur.com/a/jkvqIft. I'm assuming they are controlling the colour cycle of the gradient animation? Setting a minimum lightness/alpha/etc could help here.

p.s. I'm not procrastinating you are

It's a moot point. There are toddlers who play on iPads that are patient and understanding. And there are toddlers who have never used an iPad in their life that are aggressive and short tempered.

Great design!

Thought provoking but my retired 70 year old dad (former boiler maker) quite appreciates his iPad, the only computing device he can reliably use.

I understand the premise of this article however the simplification of technology is helping humans. We are stretching the use of technology down the tech literacy curve. The folks who are already tech literate don't need help. When their computer slows down they'll just open task manager/terminal, find the software with the memory leak and kill it.

My dad will never use Blender or Photoshop. He doesn't need to. But if he did it would be completely overwhelming. Checking the weather and getting the latest news on his iPad is just fine. For most people it really "should just work".

An important but overlooked area is studying the fundamentals of the design field you are in. If it's animation, study the 12 principles of animation. If it's UI design, study gestalt, etc etc.

Going to first principles always grounds your work in the best possible way.

I was settling in for a long read but it kinda... ended haha. Great article! Have been in this position many times. Starting a project and then shipping it are clearly the two high points.

So close to greatness. The automatic centring of content means that you can try and click on something and it moves from under your cursor. Otherwise I love the execution!

I like how the colours transition between the different work images, that's cool. I personally don't like scroll carousels but you've implemented it quite well. I'd prefer those images laid out in a neat grid but that's just me :)

Nice shot!