Nic Chan’s Delightfully Retro Website Is a Visual and Accessible Triumph

Several years ago, I read a post lamenting the current state of personal website design. Specifically, the author — sorry, I don’t remember their name — was frustrated that, as more and more people turned to content management systems like WordPress, their websites were all starting to look identical and devoid of personality.

There’s some truth to that. Survey the most commonly used blog themes on any platform, WordPress or otherwise, and you’ll find many visual similarities. When designing for most CMSes, you inevitably butt heads with their “assumptions” about how content should be organized and structured, which will influence your design in some way, shape, or form.

Furthermore, certain design patterns and approaches have become “standards” over the years, such as the ubiquitous two-column layouts used by countless blog themes. (The single centered column layout that Opus uses has also become pretty common in recent years; just look at any Substack site.)

Thus, it’s a real treat when you find a website that specifically avoids any such assumptions or standards. Case in point: Nic Chan’s website. Chan is a Hong Kong-based front-end developer who set some ambitious goals for herself when she kicked off her redesign in September 2023:

I know I wanted to do something with a lot more fun and flair, while still remaining accessible. I know a lot of designers feel “constrained” by thinking accessibility, so I wanted to build something that showed that you can still build something fun and beautiful while thinking about accessibility. I have a deep love for pixel art and retro games, and felt with the View Transitions API coming out, I could experiment with building some kind of operating system like interface for my new site.

Indeed, the final result, which Chan launched last September, fully embraces and embodies a vintage Windows 95-inspired aesthetic. It’s immediately apparent that Chan put a lot of effort into every aspect of her design, from the look of the navigation icons and taskbar buttons to the way the design’s “windows” minimize and maximize. That becomes even clearer while reading her “behind the scenes” posts about the redesign process and seeing her thoughtfulness concerning color palette and font selection, accessibility features, icon design, frameworks (Astro, Svelte), and much more.

It’s always inspiring to see such a detailed and intentional website design, and especially one that teaches you some new things. (Courtesy of Chan’s posts, I discovered several accessibility tools that I’m really excited to use in an upcoming project.) Safe to say, Chan’s attempt at creating a website that’s as fun and beautiful as it is accessible was a complete success.

It’s also a good reminder that web developers should have their own websites where they can play and test and create. From Chan’s launch announcement: “I’m really glad to have a little space on my own where I get to explore new advancements in core web technologies and finetune my approach to the craft of making websites.” That’s a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree.