Interactive design that survives 2030

Most websites we build now will outlive at least one design trend. The trick is to make them age into being interesting instead of dated.

Three things we steer away from when we want a site to age well: overly specific scroll interactions tied to one device idiom, typography that depends on a single moment in display-type fashion, and any motion choreography that won't make sense without sound.

Three things we lean into: editorial discipline (chapter marks, hierarchy that survives a refresh of every visual element), structural systems (tokens, components, content modelling that can hold new brand expression), and craft signals that depend on care rather than novelty (typesetting, accessibility, performance).

The websites we still admire from 2018 share those traits. The ones we don't admire share their generation's flourish without their generation's discipline.