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- /qua'rt:zo/ is our belief in a calmer, more graceful web. In this studio that I founded alongside Mateus Dal Bianco, we design and develop websites and webapps that breathe slower.
See it live
- An interface is a membrane between humans and machines. Creating systems that regulate their symbiosis is a physiological matter.
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Question
- Our challenge was to communicate these values in a timeless manner, without resorting to nostalgia or absolute answers. Our admiration for the simplicity of the early web needed to be at the core. Yet, we wanted a hint at the tactile, the real.
- How can we make websites that are calmer and lower on dopamine spikes, and yet feel fresh, pique the curiosity?
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Answer
- Touch some paper. We saw in print media the promisse of a web experience that feels grounded, integral. The book was a response to the scroll(ing). It added margins, pages, indexes, empty space. It was designed and refined over the centuries for focus.
- ✸ By applying those same principles, we enabled people to stay on our catalog-like website for an average of 1m 46s —more than 3x the average for tech websites.
No overstimulation, no attention traps. - Our bet: these visual references cue people to a state of calm and focused attention. When we get a book or catalog to go through it, we go into this state of deeper information absorption.
- Printed media got to that over centuries of experimentation.
We can lean onto that for the web too. Screens can learn from paper.