AETHERIA

Overview

A portfolio theme for interactive design studios, creative-technology ateliers and WebGL practices — the kind of studio whose product is the interface itself, and which therefore cannot get away with a site that looks like everyone else’s.

The signature: a real particle field

A WebGL2 simulation runs behind the whole site. Positions and velocities are integrated on the GPU with transform feedback; the trail accumulates in a ping-ponged framebuffer rather than being faked with a translucent rectangle painted over the previous frame. Five named simulations ship — accretion, drift, lattice, shell and harmonic — and each is a real configuration of the same engine, switchable from the page. Nothing is a video, and nothing is a canvas 2D loop pretending to be a GPU.

The instrument rail on the left reports what the engine is actually doing: which simulation, how many nodes, what frame rate. It is telemetry, not decoration — and it is also the section index, which is why no section on this site needs a decorative eyebrow of its own.

Every section is laid out differently

The hero is asymmetric type against a live readout card. The work index is a numbered list that opens into media rather than a card grid. The lab is a workbench with tabs. The practice statement is a running two-column spread with hanging numerals and no cards at all. The capabilities are a genuine matrix table. Recognition is a ledger, then a wall of quotes set at three different weights.

Editable, not hard-coded

Case studies, capabilities, recognition entries and testimonials are all post types with real fields. Case studies are pages, not a modal, so they can be linked, shared and indexed. The project-inquiry builder posts to a real endpoint, stores the brief as a private post, and emails the studio.

Degrades on purpose

Under a reduced-motion preference the field renders one settled frame and stops. On a device without WebGL2 the canvas stays empty and the page reads normally. With JavaScript blocked nothing is hidden. Measured before release: zero failing text nodes against the actually-painted background across eight page types, zero horizontal overflow at 390px, zero console errors.

What ships

No third-party JavaScript at all — no Three.js, no GSAP, no animation library. Three self-hosted OFL typefaces (Syne, Plus Jakarta Sans, JetBrains Mono). Fifteen case-study plates rendered by the theme’s own shaders rather than licensed from a stock library. One-click demo importer, full translation template, RTL stylesheet, GPL v2.