Social media killed website creativity
There was a time when the internet felt like an art gallery. Every site was a reflection of someone’s taste — a messy collage of colors, typefaces, GIFs, and music that was very personalized, character integrated visual storytelling to share with visitors. Web developers and designers were trying their very best to express themselves while pushing the browser to its limit depending on the capabilities of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Now with all the new features of CSS, WebGL, JavaScript, HTML at our fingertips the sky is the limit on what we can do as developers. Then came social media, and the web started to look the same everywhere.
A brief history
The handmade web
As I turn on the wayback machine, I remember my first time seeing websites in the late 90’s and early 2000s. It was AOL, Yahoo Mail, Space Jam, Pixar’s Toy Story. I also saw a wide range of clunky looking sites, with comic cans or serif fonts, with audio effects, overly high contrast colored backgrounds, animation crafted with Flash, very slow loading times, but 8-10yr old kid entering these portals (with the permission of my parents of course) was an absolute blast.
The platform era
Then comes my generation of newbie developers and designers who tried their hands in HTML and CSS around 2005 - 2012. In junior high school, having a MySpace and/or Tumblr was the state of social currency back then and who had the coolest page. I was really into making sites for myself and others. I would see people’s pages and I would ask “How did they do that?“ I would inspect other pages, reverse engineer CSS, experiment with inline styles just to see what happens. It was incredible especially for artists who were sharing their music such Tyler, The Creator, Frank Ocean, and so much more. The blogger era was its peak during this time. Music curators had so much fun discovering artists especially because people enjoyed the creativity. Kanye West had an incredible blog called Universe City during the arc of The College Dropout, Late Registration and Graduation. It felt like this era came and went so fast.
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram just hatched but the growth was exponential. We migrated from hacking sites and building experiences from scratch to now simply uploading photos, videos and status updates for likes.
From “My Site“ to “My Feed”
Websites had a feeling of entering someone’s personal living space that was built in the most honest way possible. Now we all live in homogenous rented spaces. It felt as though social media has gentrified the web where the web has to comply with the user expectation and experience social media and mobile apps provide. Design thinking, colors, typography, layout has been decided for us and the only thing left for creativity is the curation of a lifestyle which may or may not be true - but clicks, visibility, instant gratification is what matters.
It affected the creativity of web developers including myself because we’ve fallen victim to a system that works and has a transition into the corporate space.
In the corporate space
Now as an adult working as a developer, most companies want the most efficient website, a strong brand, high conversion and SEO, fast, and responsive. Right before the emergence of AI, every site you see has a white background using Inter font or some font pairing curated by typewolf, with a minimalist layout. Design systems and grids have also contributed the homogenization of web applications. Every major company like Shopify, Adobe, Atlassian, Google Material UI, and Apple have set the standard on what other corporations should do to optimize the design in their products. Reusable component libraries such as shadcn have now risen where developers don’t have to reinvent the wheel anymore. AI now can repeat these patterns and develop working prototypes within minutes just entering a prompt describing your product.
Don’t get me wrong, the technology of the web under the hood of all these sites and applications are efficient. Accessibility, user experience, design thinking and performance is off the charts. But where’s the humanity in design now?
What now?
Now that AI has emerged I have a hunch people are craving hand crafted artifacts again. The fast production supported by AI has opened everyone’s eyes to see what we’ve given away amongst the slop. We’ve given away our sense of the human ability to think critically and creatively in UI/UX design, storytelling, and we’re no longer being curious.
So what do we do?
Explore print design
There’s some gaps I feel we have filled in graphic and print design. I don’t think we have gracefully transitioned and maintained the wonderful explorations done by previous designers. Jen Simmons has exposed this in her experiment lab where she explores Jan Tischold’s grid systems using the grid property in CSS. Your mind will be blown by the things you can do today and it opens so many ideas for what you can on your next website.
Jason Pamental, principal designer at Chewy.com did an amazing keynote at Smashing Conference 2025 in NYC talking about typographic design and efficiency on the web. He introduced a few examples in poster design, brochures, and how typography can be used as an element of expression in design. Which reminds me I need to check out the Poster House in NYC. He mentioned there are really inspirational pieces in there.
Recreate mobile app experiences
Another approach I’ve been thinking about is adding mobile app user experience to the web. There’s so many features I’ve yet to see more popularized such as seamless page transitions, scrolling capabilities and animations. For example, Adam Mosseri & Instagram introduced a new simplified navigation between its main pages (main feed, reels, DMS, explore, and profile) where the user can scroll left and right — I wonder if that’s something to introduce to the web. Navigation on the web is an area that can use a new perspective. CSS is so powerful now that I wonder if we can recreate some animations from SwiftUI.