Vela Launch

A studio that makes high-craft digital experiences has no business launching on a template. The site needed to demonstrate, not describe — every element of the stack we use for clients had to be present and working in the site itself.

The harder challenge was balance: a showcase that prioritises spectacle over clarity is useless for a commercial studio. The site had to be genuinely impressive to the right clients, and immediately intelligible to everyone else.

"The site is the pitch. If it takes longer than ten seconds to understand what we do, we've already lost."

The background environment is a real-time WebGL particle simulation — a fluid, responsive field that reacts to cursor position and scroll velocity. It's not decorative: it communicates at a glance that this is a studio comfortable at the intersection of technical and aesthetic.

Page transitions use a custom curtain system driven by GSAP — smooth, deliberate, and fast. Navigation is instantaneous using Barba.js prefetching, with scroll state managed by Lenis for framerate-independent physics. The site performs as well as it looks.

Typographically, the site is tight and confident — editorial sizing, restrained palette, precise spacing. Every animation is functional rather than ornamental. The restraint is intentional: let the work carry the weight, not the wrapper around it.