Project Announced

The beginning

AXIS enters production today. What starts here is a template unlike anything currently available at the premium tier: a full-bleed, scroll-scrubbed video hero where a product film plays frame by frame as you scroll, spec counters lock like an instrument cluster, and a model name morphs weight and width in real time.

The brief has been finalized. The palette is graphite #0E0F12 — warm near-black, not pure black — with a single acid-lime #CBFF1F accent used exactly once as a power indicator. No gradients. No glow meshes. Every decorative element either pulls from a cockpit HUD reference or earns its place structurally.

What is being built

Six pages ship in v1:

• Home — HUD video hero → engineering breakdown → spec highlights → horizontal gallery → reserve band → FAQ
• Specs — full instrument-styled spec sheet with mono tables, ruled grid, and comparison toggle
• Design — editorial scrollytelling, second video moment, materials section
• Reserve — configurator UI (variant + color picker, options form — UI state only)
• Updates — this feed, powered by Astro Content Collections
• 404 — on-brand off-axis dead-end with acid-lime CTA home

The aesthetic

The design is the exact opposite temperature to every warm editorial template currently selling well. Where those are abundant and tactile-warm, AXIS is cold, precise, and restrained. Think high-spec product film crossed with a cockpit HUD.

The recurring instrument motif — mono labels in Geist Mono, hairline rules, corner crop marks, ticking counters — runs through every section. It gives the template a coherent “voice” that generic AI-generated layouts never have.

Stack

• Astro 6.1 + React 19 islands + Tailwind 4 @theme
• GSAP 3.13+ (SplitText, ScrollTrigger — all plugins free since 2025)
• Lenis smooth scroll
• Astro ClientRouter (shared-element View Transitions)
• Video: hero.mp4 re-encoded with keyint=1 — every frame is an I-frame, enabling smooth currentTime scrubbing via requestVideoFrameCallback
• Fonts: Archivo Variable (wght + wdth axes for the scroll morph) + Geist Sans + Geist Mono — all self-hosted via Astro Fonts API

Production has started. Subsequent updates will track engineering milestones, design decisions, and production progress.