Cryptic Wonders Website Gets a New Look and a Clearer Home
I’ve been tinkering with the website again, which probably won’t surprise anyone who has ever watched me stare at a page layout for too long and suddenly decide something needs to move three pixels to the left, but this round felt different.
It was less about changing colours, moving buttons, or adding another section. It was more about finally understanding what kind of place Cryptic Wonders is supposed to be.
For a while, I kept wrestling with a question that refused to stay simple: What exactly is Cryptic Wonders?
Is it an online store for my unconventional, yet totally useful, life-changing products? A movie theatre to showcase my videos, movies, and experiments? Perhaps a place to share some insights and link to my social media accounts? Maybe a portal to share my books and stories? How about a strange little corner of the internet from another dimension where curious people might stumble into something unexpected?
The answer, annoyingly and wonderfully, is... ... yes.
My voice, or the voices in my head, were what I kept trying to simplify.
Cryptic Wonders was never going to fit comfortably inside the shape of a traditional online store. I believe in the products I make, so the store matters. It deserves to be clear, useful, and easy to navigate, but I’m also a writer, filmmaker, editor, storyteller, experimenter, and somebody who likes making weird things just to see what happens.
So I stopped trying to make the website behave like only one thing.
A new entrance
The first big change is the new landing page.
I wanted the entrance to actually feel like an entrance. Not a sales counter or a notice board. I didn't want a pile of links asking you to immediately choose something. That was the problem before! It was simply too cluttered.
I wanted to give you a moment to arrive. Let the plane land before it's time to disembark.
The new landing page sets the tone before you move deeper into the site. From there, the main page has been tightened up and made easier to move through.
And that became one of the main goals of the redesign:
Let each part of Cryptic Wonders be what it actually is.
The store can be a store.
The theatre can feel like a theatre.
The writing can have its own room.
And the strange little hidden things can stay strange and slightly hidden.
The Cryptic Wonders website is easier to navigate. Still a little weird.
I wanted the site to become easier to understand without sanding off its personality. That balance matters to me.
Too plain, and the whole thing loses its pulse.
Too mysterious, and people need a candle, a map, and possibly a blood oath just to find the store.
So the new version tries to hold both ideas at once:
It should be clear enough that you are not lost.
It should be strange enough that you might want to get lost anyway.
From the main page, you can head to the store, enter the theatre, learn a little about the person behind all this, or wander toward a few things that aren’t being pointed at quite so loudly.
I like websites that reward curiosity too.
Not everything needs a flashing arrow saying: LOOK HERE. THIS IS THE HIDDEN THING.
Sometimes it’s better to notice something, click it, and wonder why it exists.
Curiosity should have some rewards.
The store has changed too
The store also received a proper remodel, although I’ll go deeper into that in the next post.
The short version is that I wanted it to breathe.
The old version sometimes tried to explain too much, too soon. That comes from a good place. When I care about something I’ve made, I want to tell you where it came from, why it exists, what inspired it, what it connects to, and probably what I was eating when the idea occurred to me.
That’s great when someone wants the deeper story. It’s less useful when they simply want to see what’s available.
So the new store is more straightforward.
You can see the products first. If something catches your attention, you can go deeper from there. The deeper story is still there. It just doesn’t need to stand in the doorway blocking the shelf.
More on that in the next post.
The biggest change is probably the tone
The biggest change might not actually be the landing page, the navigation, or the store. It might be the tone of the whole place.
Cryptic Wonders feels less like a website I’m trying to turn into something and more like an online home for the things I create:
Stories.
Videos.
Books.
Products.
Experiments.
Ideas.
Some useful.
Some strange.
Some may eventually grow into something larger.
Some may remain exactly as odd as they are.
That range used to feel like a problem I needed to solve. Now it feels like the point. I don’t want Cryptic Wonders to become one flat thing. I want it to be a home with rooms.
Some rooms are tidy.
Some are theatrical.
Some are practical.
Some contain questionable objects in jars.
A cleaner house can still have a haunted cupboard. That feels about right.
There’s still more to change. There always will be. The store deserves its own update, and it’s getting one next.
More projects are coming.
More stories are coming.
And I suspect a few corners of the site will continue getting stranger.
For now, the door is open.
Welcome in.
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