Designing La Figue: Japanese Codes Meet Quiet Luxury

This is not a developer portfolio

This portfolio borrows from Japanese design philosophy and quiet luxury fashion houses instead of developer templates. The colour palette is a fig. The logo is a kanji palindrome. Every interaction reveals a hidden layer. Here is why and how.

I was sitting in my kitchen one evening, sketchbook open, trying to find the image that would hold the whole design together. I’d been looking at developer portfolios for an hour and they all blurred into the same thing. Dark backgrounds, gradient accents, three feature cards, a contact form. Clean. Forgettable. I closed the laptop and made tea. Standing at the counter, waiting for the kettle, I thought about my grandmother’s garden in Morocco. The fig tree by the wall. How the fruit looked like nothing from the outside, rough and dark, almost ugly. But when you opened one, the colour inside was startling. Deep red, sweet, complex. You had to know to look.

I wrote one word in the sketchbook: figue.

That image became everything. Not a logo concept or a colour swatch. A philosophy. The site at rest would be austere, almost bare. But interact with it and layers reveal themselves. The whole identity grew from that kitchen moment, from a memory I didn’t know was waiting to be useful.

I didn’t want functional. I wanted the kind of memorable where you close the tab and something stays with you, even if you can’t quite say what.

This portfolio isn’t a showcase of my technical skills. It’s a window into how I think. The design is the first argument. The technical stack I chose exists to serve this design, not the other way around.

What was the design brief?

Three words. Deep, raw, direct.

Not minimal in the Scandinavian sense. Not cold, not sterile, not “less is more” as an excuse for emptiness. Minimal in the Japanese sense. Ma (間), the intentional use of negative space. Kanso (簡素), what remains after you remove everything unnecessary. Shibui (渋い), the beauty that grows on you slowly, like a song you didn’t like the first time.

I wanted the site to feel like entering a quiet room where everything has been placed with intent. Like making couscous from scratch. The recipe looks simple but the timing is everything. One wrong step and the whole thing falls flat. The silence isn’t emptiness. It’s a decision.

How the fig became the design

The site at rest is monochrome, austere, almost bare. Like the skin of the fruit. But interact with it and layers reveal themselves. Hover over a project and the description appears. Hover over a pillar and the conviction behind it unfolds. The olive accent, the colour of fig leaves, only appears when you engage.

The site rewards attention. Like a fig rewards patience.

What does the hanko logo mean?

The logo in the top left corner is a hanko (判子), a Japanese personal seal. Inside the square, four kanji characters arranged in a 2x2 grid:

無  花
花  果

Read horizontally: 無花 (without flower) / 花果 (flower fruit). Read vertically: 無花 (without flower) / 花果 (flower fruit).

Both directions give the same meaning. 無花果 is the Japanese word for fig. It literally translates to “fruit without flower.” The character 花 (flower) sits on the diagonal, acting as the pivot between the two readings.

A palindrome seal. Also the most personal element of the entire site. It connects the fig metaphor to Japanese design philosophy to the act of stamping your identity onto your work. I remember the moment I first saw the 2x2 grid rendered properly. I’d been sketching variations on paper, none of them felt right, too decorative, too busy. Then the palindrome structure clicked into place and the seal looked inevitable. Like it had always existed and I’d just found it. That’s the feeling you chase in design. Not invention. Discovery.

Most visitors will see a decorative square. A few will recognise the kanji. Even fewer will understand the palindrome. I’m fine with that. The ones who do won’t forget it.

How do fashion house codes apply to web design?

I didn’t look at other developer portfolios for inspiration. I looked at Celine, Bottega Veneta and The Row. Quiet luxury brands that let the product speak.

What I borrowed:

The editorial layout. Sections aren’t stacked components. They’re composed like a magazine spread. The featured project gets a generous card with breathing room. The other projects sit in a compact list below. The hierarchy tells you what matters without needing to say it.

The collection model. Projects aren’t listed chronologically. They’re grouped in collections: SS26, FW25, SS25. Like seasonal drops from a fashion house. When I add new work, I create a new collection. The site ages like a brand, not like a CV.

The absence of labels. The writing page has no section titles. No “Featured”, no “Archive”, no “Essential reading.” Why? Because if you need to label something “important”, the design has already failed. The layout hierarchy does the work. The latest article is large with an olive accent line. The curated picks are cards. The archive is a compact list.

The silent footer. The email is there. The links are there. No “Let’s connect!” or “Get in touch.” If you want to reach me, you know where to look.

The wrong turn

Early on I tried a 3-column “What I do” section. Engineering, leadership, writing, each in its own card with an icon and a short description. It looked exactly like every other portfolio I’d been trying to avoid. Three cards in a row. A grid that screamed template. I lived with it for two days, opened the site each morning and felt nothing. On the third morning I deleted all three columns and replaced them with the pillars that unfold on hover. The density went down. The meaning went up. Sometimes the design that looks more “complete” is the one that says less.

What do the two clocks mean?

In the hero, between “Chatellerault” and “London”, two clocks pulse in real time. Paris time on the left. London time on the right.

Chatellerault is the small town in France where I grew up. London is where I live now. The arrow between them isn’t just geography. It’s a life compressed into a symbol. Every city in between, every move, every assumption stripped away along the road.

The clocks breathe. The colon between hours and minutes fades in and out every 2.5 seconds. It’s the only continuous animation on the site. The site is alive, but barely. Like a heartbeat in a quiet room.

The grain

If you look closely at the background, it’s not flat black. A subtle noise texture covers the entire surface, like the grain of washi paper or raw concrete. It adds depth without adding elements. The black has a tactile quality to it. It feels like a material, not a colour.

95% of visitors will never consciously notice this. But they’ll feel the difference. A flat #0C0C0C background feels digital. A textured one feels physical. That gap between noticing and feeling… that’s where design lives. It’s true for websites. It’s also true for the best rooms I’ve walked into, in London, in Paris, in places I didn’t expect to feel anything at all.

The olive

The accent colour is olive (#5C6B4F). It appears only on interaction. Hover a link, a pillar, a project, and the olive reveals itself. At rest, the site is completely monochrome. Warm greys on near-black.

The olive is the colour of fig leaves. It’s also the colour of patience. You only see it when you engage. The site doesn’t perform for you. It responds to you.

What this taught me about leadership

Designing this portfolio changed how I think about leadership. Not because design is like management. But because the same principle applies: the best systems are the ones where every decision is intentional and nothing is accidental.

A good leader doesn’t add more process. They remove friction until what remains is essential. A good design doesn’t add more elements. It removes noise until what remains is meaningful. I’m not sure I’ve fully figured out where that line sits. But I know it exists, and I know most people stop looking for it too early.

The site has no shadows, no gradients, no decorative icons, no rounded corners beyond 2px, no bright colours, no emoji. Each constraint was a decision. Each absence is a presence.

The artist and the engineer

I’m an engineer. I build distributed systems, lead teams, write code. But this portfolio wasn’t built by the engineer in me. It was built by the part that grew up restless in a small town, dreaming of cities big enough to never be boring. The part that believes craft matters. That how you present your work is part of the work itself.

If I’m honest, this site is the most personal thing I’ve ever shipped publicly.

The portfolio is the argument. The articles are the evidence. The design is the first impression that makes someone want to read the evidence.

Writing is how I think. Building is how I test it. Sharing is how I sharpen it. Claude Code was my build partner throughout the process. The design vision was mine, the execution was a conversation between intent and implementation.

This site is all three.