Vative Creative Gets a Win In The Contra x Squarespace Make It Real Challenge
I’m incredibly excited to share that Vative Creative has been named a winner in the Contra x Squarespace Make It Real Challenge, taking home the Social Media Superstar award for my project, The Void.
The Make It Real Challenge was created by Squarespace and Contra to challenge designers to bring ambitious ideas to life using Squarespace and its growing suite of professional design tools. For me, that made this competition especially exciting because pushing the boundaries of what a Squarespace website can look and feel like has become a huge part of what I do at Vative.
The Project: The Void
The Void started as a concept website for an AI-powered game art studio specializing in remastering characters and environments.
But the project was really an experiment.
I wanted to see how far I could push the experience of a Squarespace website while making sure every design decision still had a purpose. Instead of adding movement simply because I could, I wanted the animations, interactions, layouts, and transitions to contribute to the story being told.
The result was a highly interactive website built around responsive Stacks, layered and asymmetrical compositions, block transforms, and a combination of scroll, hover, cursor-follow, and appear animations.
The goal was for the website to feel less like moving from section to section and more like moving through an experience.
Pushing Squarespace Further
One of the biggest reasons this recognition means so much to me is that it represents something I’ve believed for years:
Squarespace doesn't have to look like Squarespace.
The platform gives us the foundation, but what we do with that foundation as designers is where things get interesting.
I’ve spent years experimenting with interactions, layouts, animation, typography, and tools that allow me to continually push my work further. The Void gave me an opportunity to bring many of those ideas together in a single project.
Squarespace specifically highlighted the project's use of responsive Stacks for complex layouts, block transforms for layered compositions, and purposeful motion throughout the experience. Having those details recognized by the company behind the platform makes the award even more meaningful.
Design First
This award also reinforces one of the philosophies behind Vative Creative: put design first.
Great website design isn't about adding as many effects as possible. It's about knowing when to break the grid, when to introduce movement, when to simplify, and when to create something unexpected.
The best interactions should feel like they belong there.
That's what I wanted The Void to demonstrate.
Every hover, scroll effect, transition, and composition was an opportunity to make the experience more memorable without losing sight of the website itself.
A Pretty Cool Moment for Vative
What started with me teaching myself how to build a website for my own artwork has grown into Vative Creative, designing websites for businesses across industries and continually experimenting with what modern web design can become.
Being recognized by Squarespace and Contra for that work is a pretty incredible milestone.
More than anything, though, it makes me want to keep experimenting.
Keep pushing the platform.
Keep trying ideas that probably shouldn't work.
And keep finding new ways to make websites feel like something people experience—not simply something they scroll through.
A huge thank you to Squarespace and Contra for putting together the Make It Real Challenge and recognizing The Void alongside some seriously talented designers.
And we're definitely not done pushing things yet.
