Ciao π Iβm Edoardo, a Inventive Frontend Engineer based mostly in Vienna, Italian by origin. Almost a decade in, and that is nonetheless the one factor Iβve ever needed to do.
My work sits on the intersection of engineering and craft. Inventive frontend growth: animation, complicated interactions, headless CMS structure, the occasional delicate impact that makes somebody cease and look twice. Iβve labored with purchasers like Buck, Disney, Porsche, Crimson Bull, Le Labo Fragrances, and Getty. Iβm at the moment freelance and open to new tasks, so for those whoβre constructing one thing that deserves to be constructed nicely, get in contact. Over time Iβve touched just about the entire stack: backend, servers, APIs, frontend, e-commerce, design techniques.
Early in my profession I even constructed a small CMS from scratch simply to get my fingers soiled with Node, Specific, MongoDB, and Handlebars. I typically write technical articles, together with for Codrops, and I attempt to keep lively and visual in the neighborhood. Iβm additionally a part of Okay Dev, which has been an excellent house for that. I typically construct the type of work that finally ends up on Awwwards, FWA, and CSSDA, however thereβs much more that by no means sees an award web page and Iβm equally happy with it. I not too long ago joined the Awwwards jury. That one nonetheless feels surreal. I take it significantly although: the net has sufficient templated, copy-pasted, patched-together web sites. My aim as a decide is to assist hold the bar genuinely excessive and reward the work thatβs really pushing one thing ahead.
What retains me right here is that the browser remains to be a genuinely artistic medium. It rewards obsession. It punishes shortcuts. I discover that motivating in a approach I canβt absolutely clarify.
Right hereβs a take a look at a few of what Iβve been as much as these days. π Audio on.
Initiatives Iβm Proud Of
Selecting favorites is difficult. Iβve shipped rather a lot over time and Iβm genuinely happy with most of it. What I’ll say is that a few of my most formative work occurred earlier than AI turned a each day instrument. Again while youβd be caught on one thing for days, satisfied youβd by no means determine it out, and then you definitely did. That type of wrestle leaves a mark. The understanding that comes out of it’s completely different from something you will get by prompting your approach by way of an issue. There are additionally a number of tasks within the pipeline I canβt share but, I genuinely can not wait.
1. Anuc Residence
A web site for Anuc Residence, a furnishings and inside model. My first Website of the Day as an impartial freelancer. Dev-wise, totally owned by me from kickoff to launch.
Tech stack: Vercel, Sanity, Subsequent.js
12 months: 2025
Collaborators: Eva Landaluce
Recognition: Awwwards Website of the Day, FWA, picked up throughout a number of design directories.
Why it stands out: This one began from a clear, thought-about imaginative and prescient. Eva dealt with the branding and design, and from the start there was a transparent temper we needed to guard: calm, clean, unhurried. My job was to translate that into code with out dropping it. Gentle animations, intentional interactions, nothing that may get in the best way of the sensation. The technical choices had been all in service of that ambiance.
Thereβs additionally one thing categorically completely different a few mission the place your title is on the road from begin to end. No company round you, no staff to soak up the stress. Simply you, the shopper, and the work. When the SOTD got here by way of I jumped out of my chair and it took me an excellent half-hour to settle again down. That one is particular in a approach the others arenβt.
2. My Private Website
My private portfolio. No formal design course of, only a tough sketch after which straight into code, iterating as I went. It ended up successful a Website of the Day anyway, which says one thing. I take advantage of it commonly and hold including to it.
Tech stack: Vercel, Cloudflare, Sanity, Subsequent.js
12 months: 2025
Recognition: Awwwards Website of the Day, FWA, picked up throughout a number of design directories.
Why it stands out: Thereβs one thing releasing about constructing one thing totally for your self with no shopper, no temporary, no constraints. Itβs in all probability over-engineered by any affordable normal, however thatβs the purpose. Itβs my little playground, and likewise the place I experiment. Private web site all you need, however the tech behind it’s enterprise stage. Thatβs how I roll.
The true problem was video. Over 300 of them throughout the location. I constructed a customized pipeline and a customized Sanity discipline: drag and drop a video within the studio, it uploads to Cloudflare, generates a 240p preview, and auto-populates all of the fields. Every little thing runs on the AWS S3 SDK with movies in an R2 bucket, so caching comes totally free. Subsequent.js server parts, cache tag revalidation, one click on save in Sanity and solely the one element that modified will get revalidated.
This model has lasted longer than any earlier one, which for me is the true praise.
3. Tersa
A wellness and restoration model with a powerful artistic course. Pioneering holistic restoration options, and a web site that wanted to really feel prefer it.
Tech stack: AWS, Craft CMS, Subsequent.js
12 months: 2023
Collaborators: Wild
Recognition: FWA, Awwwards Honorable Point out, The Webby Awards Honoree
Why it stands out: This one was genuinely enjoyable to construct. The artistic course was expressive and the mission pushed me into new territory on a number of fronts. It began with a headless Shopify integration, my first time constructing a headless cart utilizing the Storefront API. An fascinating expertise that taught me rather a lot, even when it acquired eliminated later for enterprise causes.
The opposite problem was visible: large, blurry, animated gradients. Sounds easy till you attempt to blur and animate that many pixels on display directly and Safari simply refuses to cooperate. That mission taught me there’s a exhausting restrict to how a lot you’ll be able to push that impact earlier than the browser pushes again. We labored round it fastidiously, examined early variations of Rive for animated icons, and used it for the gradients too. Good lesson discovered the exhausting approach.
4. Le Journal Society
A luxurious editorial platform for Le Labo, mixing craftsmanship with a imaginative and prescient for timeless design and sustainable artistry.
Tech stack: AWS, Craft CMS, Subsequent.js
12 months: 2022
Collaborators: Wild, Frederik Hansen
Why it stands out: This one simply sticks. Frederikβs artistic course was spectacular and the collaboration felt genuinely fluid. We mixed robust property with cautious technical execution and the end result was one thing that felt cohesive in a approach that doesnβt at all times occur. A enjoyable, artistic mission that by no means acquired submitted for awards, which is a pity, however the work speaks for itself regardless.
About Me
It in all probability began with my fatherβs Home windows 98 laptop computer. I used to be 5, couldnβt learn or write, no thought what I used to be doing. However there was one thing about having a machine in entrance of you that responded to what you probably did. That feeling by no means actually went away. I began programming at 14, at an IT highschool that launched it the old school approach: logical diagrams on paper, then Java written by hand. At 16, an internship at a software program home the place I picked up JavaScript and jQuery, and spent most of my time coaching an early ML mannequin to acknowledge and skim gasoline meters. Optical character recognition on utility {hardware}. Attention-grabbing drawback for a 16-year-old.
Net got here correctly at 17, by way of a college course that lit one thing up. I began a Pc Science bachelor round that point and finally dropped it, however the algorithms course alone was definitely worth the detour. Thatβs what genuinely formed how I take into consideration issues: breaking them down, discovering essentially the most environment friendly path, eradicating what doesnβt have to be there. I discovered Codrops virtually instantly, award websites adopted, and I understood fairly shortly that this was a artistic medium disguised as a technical one.
What adopted was six months of intense self-study, 12 hours a day, commonly till 2 or 3am. On-line assets, Stack Overflow like each developer who has ever lived, programs right here and there. I went by way of Atom, then Elegant Textual content, then VS Code when it got here alongside and by no means seemed again. However the factor that basically moved the needle was replication: choose a web site you admire, open a clean file, construct it from scratch in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. When caught, open DevTools, examine the DOM, keep there till you perceive. Youβre not following directions. Youβre reverse-engineering choices made by individuals who already knew what they had been doing. There isn’t any extra highly effective solution to be taught this craft.
After that, companies, then six years at Wild in Vienna, and now freelance once more.
The return to freelance was deliberate. Company life is comfy in ways in which begin to value you after some time. What I didnβt absolutely anticipate was how a lot the non-creative aspect would demand: positioning, pricing, realizing which purchasers to pursue and which to say no politely however firmly (an artwork kind in itself). Nonetheless figuring elements of it out.
Outdoors of labor, I hit the fitness center commonly. Again within the day I informed myself I used to be going to be a match developer, simply to go in opposition to the stereotype. Been engaged on it for years.
Philosophy
The technical and the aesthetic usually are not separate considerations. A superbly designed web site constructed on fragile code isnβt nice work. Itβs half-finished work. The codebase is a part of the craft.
Iβm not a designer, however years of working intently with genuinely proficient ones gave me one thing adjoining: an actual sensibility for whatβs working and what isnβt, the vocabulary to have an precise dialog about artistic course. That got here from proximity, not concept. I can function in two modes: receiving a completely resolved design and honouring it faithfully, or being introduced in earlier when issues are nonetheless being formed. The second is extra fascinating. The primary requires a self-discipline thatβs underrated.
Iβm not a full-3D-website particular person both. These experiences will be spectacular, however theyβre typically an excessive amount of. What I care about is the delicate impact that earns its place. Restraint, achieved nicely, is more durable than spectacle.
Efficiency is non-negotiable. A sluggish web site shouldn’t be a suitable trade-off for visible ambition. And on code: good software program isn’t about how a lot you write. Dijkstra stated it finest: βif we want to rely traces of code, we should always not regard them as traces produced however as traces spent.β Eradicating code is the true work. So go inform the AI tech bro that no person cares about what number of traces their LLM spit out yesterday.
Iβm an opinionated developer, and Iβll personal that. On tooling: I used GSAP again within the day with vanilla stacks and itβs a implausible library for that. However in a React codebase, I attain for Movement, previously Framer Movement, which Iβve been utilizing because it launched. Selecting GSAP in React means a number of guide wiring that Movement simply handles for you. Iβd quite not spend my afternoon gazing a 400-line useEffect and 100 refs.
And the small issues: a boring navbar ruins the texture of an in any other case nice web site. If urgent ESC doesnβt shut a modal, I discover. Not everybody does, and I get that, however to me it indicators that accessibility and the little interactions werenβt a precedence. These particulars are precisely what separates work thatβs been actually cared for from work thatβs simply been completed.
Iβm additionally obsessive about code high quality and code fashion. The artistic growth world has a selected kind of codebase I canβt unsee as soon as Iβve seen it: a 5000-line JavaScript file, no construction, no logic, simply vibes. I used to be writing code like that after I began. It really works, technically. However it doesnβt scale, it doesnβt survive a second developer, and it doesnβt mirror the identical care you set into the visible end result. Actual programming has construction. Thatβs not a constraint on creativity. Itβs what makes the creativity sustainable.
Instruments & Workflow
My default stack is Subsequent.js, React, TypeScript, and Sanity. Movement for animations. Deployed on Vercel or Netlify, with Cloudflare in entrance for edge efficiency. Figma for something design-adjacent, Notion for writing and pondering, VS Code and Cursor for code. On AI tooling: for me it really works as an addition to my IDE, not a alternative for it. I want full visibility and management over what Iβm writing and what the LLM writes. I’m the director of the whole lot that results in the codebase. Cursorβs autocomplete is unmatched for that, and I donβt see a cause to alter the setup anytime quickly.
The desk stays clear. I work in absolute silence. Each non-negotiable.
Closing Ideas
The instruments are shifting quicker than they ever have and lots of people are deciphering that as which means craft issues much less. I feel itβs the alternative. Style, judgment, the flexibility to assume clearly by way of a tough drawback: these take years to construct and no mannequin goes to do this be just right for you.
In case youβre earlier in your journey, a number of issues Iβd inform my youthful self. In case youβre serious about going freelance, donβt rush it. Spend time at an excellent company first, surrounded by people who find themselves higher than you. Take in how they assume, how they work, how they deal with stress. Youβll develop quicker there than you ever would figuring it out alone. And whilst youβre there, make your self seen. Share your work, put your title out, donβt wait for somebody to note you. Once you really feel prepared and you’ve got the muse, make the leap.
Those who make freelance work are those who genuinely benefit from the course of, not simply the result. That enjoyment exhibits up in the whole lot: the way you talk, how responsive you’re, how a lot you care in regards to the particulars no person requested you to care about. In case you love what you do, youβre already extra fascinating to work with than many of the competitors. No positioning technique replaces that. And for those whoβre passionate and good sufficient, the remainder will observe.
The instruments have been altering for many years. The pondering remains to be yours.
