Things I've built for fun.
Each project below is a fictional small business I designed a one-pager for — to practice the craft, push the AI workflow, and have something honest to show. No clients (yet). No templates. Real-customer work goes here when it ships.
Cincinnati Plumbing Co.
A no-nonsense one-pager I imagined for a 30-year family plumbing operation that was still living on a Yellow Pages listing.
The premise
Most independent plumbers I know are either stuck on Geocities-era templates or paying Angi $200/month to rent leads. I wanted to design the trust-led, mobile-first plumbing site I'd want my own family business to have — built for the 2am leak emergency, not the marketing department.
What I built
- Trust-led hero with response-time promise and a (fake) license number visible above the fold.
- Service grid mirroring how people actually search: drain cleaning, leak repair, water heater, 24-hour emergency.
- Click-to-call CTA pinned to mobile — most traffic in this category is someone in a panic with a flashlight.
- Designed for sub-1.5s load on a phone with one bar of LTE, no third-party scripts.
Design notes
The constraint that made it interesting: every design choice has to be honest enough that the actual plumber wouldn't flinch reading it. No stock photos of khakis and clipboards.
Bloom Bakery
A warm, photo-led one-pager for a husband-and-wife bakery I made up — running their fictional business out of Instagram DMs.
The premise
I love when small food businesses have great product but zero web presence. The fictional Bloom is exactly that: beautiful pastries, no website, custom orders happening in DMs and group texts. I designed the one-pager I'd actually want to receive a custom-cake quote from.
What I built
- Photo-first hero treatment with the day's bake schedule replacing the usual stock-image area.
- Embedded order form that drops straight into a real inbox — no Squarespace forms tax, no payment-processor lock-in.
- Mobile menu styled to feel like flipping through a printed menu, not scrolling a spreadsheet.
- Soft palette pulled directly from photography I love — warm pinks and oat-flour creams.
Design notes
The fun part was getting the typography to feel hand-set without being twee. The headline is a serif you'd see on a hand-lettered chalkboard; the body is clean and modern so the photos do the heavy emotional work.
Northwood Auto Repair
A personality-forward, mechanic-first one-pager I designed for a fictional independent shop tired of being confused with the chains.
The premise
Every independent auto shop I've ever seen has a 2009-template site with stock photos of luxury cars they don't service. I wanted to design the site that screams 'we're the local guys' the second the page loads — and lets the owner be a real human, not a Midas logo.
What I built
- Personality-forward hero — imagined real owner, real bay, real cars they actually fix.
- Honest service grid (no upsells, no "luxury detailing") with starting prices listed up front.
- Online appointment request that hits the owner's phone — not an outsourced call center.
- Bold garage-energy palette that distances the brand from corporate chains.
Design notes
The hardest call was the accent color. Auto repair is dominated by safe blues (Pep Boys, Midas) and aggressive reds (Jiffy Lube). I went with a confident orange — it reads as warm, independent, and slightly off-default in a category that desperately needs it.
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