Fewer themes, finished properly.
A catalogue of forty templates is a catalogue of forty half-finished ideas. We would rather publish two and be able to defend every screen in both.
Quaeris Design makes a short collection of Astro themes for people who care what their website looks like and still need to ship it this month.
Most website templates are sold on a screenshot and abandoned on the second page.
The pattern is familiar: a striking homepage, then a blog listing nobody art-directed, an article page with the default measure, and a content structure that makes the eleventh post harder to add than the first. The design stops where the demo stops.
Quaeris Design started from the opposite end. Decide the type system, the spacing rhythm and the content model first, then design the homepage last — because by then the constraints are real and the homepage has to live inside them like every other page.
The result is a smaller collection than it could be. That is the trade we wanted.
Not a manifesto. Just the arguments we keep having and keep settling the same way.
A catalogue of forty templates is a catalogue of forty half-finished ideas. We would rather publish two and be able to defend every screen in both.
Anyone can make a homepage look good once. The work that matters is the structure underneath it, because that is what you live with after launch.
One accent colour. One motion vocabulary. Three easing curves. Constraints are what make a theme feel like one person designed it rather than a committee.
No invented customer counts, no borrowed logos, no “award-winning”. Nothing is released until its page can describe it accurately.
The same people design the themes, build them and answer the support email.
Design director at Quaeris. Twelve years art-directing editorial and brand work before moving to product.
Articles by Iris Lindqvist ↗Front-end engineer. Builds the themes, argues for less JavaScript and owns the accessibility pass.
Articles by Noam Berger ↗