There's a certain discipline in building a website with no images, no icons, no decorative elements. When you remove everything visual, all that remains is the writing. And that changes how you think about both design and content.
Typography becomes the design
Without images to carry the visual weight, every typographic decision matters more. The size of your headings, the length of your lines, the space between paragraphs — these become the design. And they deserve the same care that we typically give to hero images and color palettes.
A well-set paragraph of text at a comfortable reading width is one of the most pleasant things on the web. It doesn't need accompaniment.
Performance as a feature
A text-only page is inherently fast. There are no images to lazy-load, no fonts to download (if you use system fonts), no JavaScript to parse and execute. The HTML and CSS together weigh a few kilobytes. The page loads in milliseconds.
This isn't just a technical curiosity — it's an accessibility feature. People on slow connections, older devices, or metered data plans get the same experience as everyone else.
Constraints breed creativity
When you can't rely on visual elements to create hierarchy and interest, you find other ways:
- Careful use of whitespace to create rhythm
- A type scale that gives headings presence without screaming
- Subtle borders and separators to define sections
- Line length and leading that invite extended reading
These are the fundamentals of good typographic design, and they've worked for centuries. The web just made us forget them for a while.