Restraint is a design decision, not the absence of one

A brief describing a '£20 million website' invites exactly the wrong response: gradients, glass panels, oversized display type, motion on every scroll trigger. That's the visual language of a website trying to convince you it's expensive. It rarely works, and it ages badly within a year.

The interfaces that actually read as expensive tend to do less, more precisely. One accent colour, used only where a decision actually needs marking — an active filter, a status indicator, a call to action. Borders instead of shadows to define structure. Motion that responds to something the user did, not motion that plays because the page loaded.

Every animation in this rebuild had to answer one question before it was kept: does this help someone understand something, or does it just move? Header compaction on scroll answers yes — it recovers vertical space once the visitor no longer needs the full hero context. A parallax effect on a hero image, tested and cut, answered no.