Goals
The goal was to create a microsite that stayed true to Dcrypted’s vision of a minimal, text-driven interface, while making the experience feel purposeful, memorable and technically well resolved. It needed to avoid feeling flat or overly simplistic, and instead turn the constraints of the concept into a clear design language.
Another key objective was to ensure the site worked well in a modern context. Although the visual inspiration came from terminal and BBS systems, the final experience still needed to be responsive, performant and usable across desktop and mobile devices, with support for keyboard, mouse and touch navigation.
Approach
My approach focused on reinterpreting the visual and interaction patterns of classic terminals for the modern web. I created a custom parser that took content written in Markdown and pre-processed into JSON, which is then drawn to the screen line by line. This helped recreate the pacing and character of vintage terminal and BBS interfaces rather than simply styling a conventional webpage to look retro.
To support the interaction model, I added keyboard navigation so the site could be explored in a way that felt consistent with the concept. At the same time, I made sure the experience remained accessible through mouse and touch input so it would still function naturally across devices.
I also set myself the challenge of creating the entire website using text alone, with no images. As part of that, I recreated Dcrypted’s portfolio company logos in ASCII art, turning a technical constraint into a distinctive visual feature. To give the site more atmosphere and prevent it from feeling too static, I developed additional visual effects including scan lines, noise and a glitch animation. I explored a number of routes using Canvas and SVG filters, but ultimately chose a simpler and more performant solution using a GIF, CSS blending and timed JavaScript and CSS animation loops.
Deliverables
I delivered a fully custom microsite for Dcrypted, including the visual design, front-end development, custom content system, keyboard navigation logic, ASCII-based visual assets and interactive effects. The site was built to be responsive, performant and usable across desktop and mobile environments while remaining faithful to the original concept.
Outcomes
The final result was a distinctive and unconventional website that captured Dcrypted’s vision while pushing it further into something more considered and memorable. By combining retro-inspired aesthetics with modern front-end techniques, the site delivered a stylised experience that stood out visually without compromising usability or performance.
The project demonstrated how a highly constrained concept could be turned into a strong digital identity, resulting in a website that felt both technically inventive and true to the client’s original idea.