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    That Mesmerising Ribbon Effect Is Not For Your Homepage

    A Visual Identity
    September 5, 2026
    2 min read
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    That Mesmerising Ribbon Effect Is Not For Your Homepage

    Codrops, a long running resource for web designers, published a demo called Building an Infinite Loom. It uses Three.js, a library for drawing 3D graphics in a browser, to take ordinary images and unravel them into flowing ribbons that weave across the screen.

    It is genuinely beautiful. It is also the kind of thing that gets shared widely, ends up in a mood board, and eventually lands in front of a business owner as "can we do something like this?"

    Here is the honest answer for most small businesses in North Phoenix: no, and you would not want to.

    Effects like this run on the visitor's device, using the graphics hardware in their phone or laptop. On a newer machine it looks effortless. On a five year old Android phone, which plenty of your customers are carrying, it can stutter, drain battery, or simply fail to load. Your homepage is often the one page that has to work everywhere, and heavy animation is the fastest way to make it work unevenly.

    There is a second cost that is easy to miss. A visitor who arrives from a Google search wants your phone number, your hours, or proof you do the thing they need. Every second spent watching an image dissolve into threads is a second they are not spending on that. Movement also causes real problems for people who get motion sickness or have vestibular conditions, which is why browsers have a "reduce motion" setting that good implementations respect.

    None of this means experimental work is pointless. Demos like this are where techniques get tested before they become ordinary. Smooth image transitions and subtle scroll effects that feel normal now started life as somebody's showpiece. So it is worth knowing this exists without treating it as a menu item.

    The place where it can earn its keep is narrow: a portfolio, a gallery, a single landing page for something visual, where the experience is the point and the audience is likely on a decent screen.

    What to do: nothing. If you have been shown something like this and you like it, ask your developer what it would cost in load time on a mid range phone, and whether the same feeling could come from better photography instead.


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