A ‘cool’ website we chose not to launch.

Back in early 2018, we were freshly bitten by the 3D bug. We were dabbling in 3D, pushing buttons, breaking files, watching things render overnight, waking up excited anyway. Around this time, we also made our first ever 3D hire, Vipul, which marked the beginning of Dreamjar’s journey into 3D. The studio was in that phase where every new tool felt full of possibility. And like the saying goes, give a man a hammer and everything starts looking like a nail. So naturally, we thought, why not make our website 3D?

The concept was seemingly simple, fun and exciting to us, and also ridiculous in the best way. Build a small city. Divide it into four zones. Each zone becomes a section of the website. Work. Services. Team. Contact. And right in the middle, a slightly taller D shaped building for ‘Our Story’ section, because of course. We imagined a floating, isometric city. Neon, but controlled. A soothing blue glow instead of a full cyberpunk rave. Streets lit softly. Buildings breathing light. The kind of neon that feels calm, keeping cognitive load low. Easy on the eyes.

Our little city really came alive through interaction. Hover over a menu item and that part of the city lights up. Hover over Work and one quadrant wakes up. Hover over Services and another zone responds. It felt magical. Very whoa. Very hero section energy. Concept to 3D to UI to interaction, everything about it felt exciting. We were deep in it. Sketches. Renders. Planning roadways. City vibe. Micro decisions about glow intensity. Long conversations about whether the city should feel futuristic or friendly. It felt like we were building a tiny world.

The decision came from practical design questions. Back then, mobile execution for something this heavy was still tricky. Performance would have been fragile. Load times would have tested patience. Data speeds, especially for a wider audience, mattered. Accessibility mattered. Usability would have leaned too heavily on novelty. Tradeoffs are part of building for the web. This one didn’t feel worth it.

So yeah, we parked it. Some versions of the artwork did make their way into a company profile cover later. The city got to exist in that small way. Maybe that’s all there was to it. You try things. You get obsessed. You fall a little in love with an idea. And then you let it go anyway. Because design isn’t just art. It’s art AND science. There’s a quote we’ve seen float around Pinterest that says it rather straight: “Art is like masturbation. It is selfish and introverted and done for you and you alone. Design is like sex. There is someone else involved, their needs matter just as much as yours, and if everything goes right, both parties are happy in the end.”

This concept was art heavy. The decision to not launch it, that was design.
And while we’re very okay with that, who knows, maybe we reignite it someday.