Responses by Ivan Chopei, art director, and Maks Stepenko, president and creative producer, The First The Last.

Background: “Era Residence (ERA) sells off-plan boutique residences on the New Golden Mile in Spain—between the towns of Marbella and Estepona—to international buyers choosing from renders alone,” says Maks Stepenko. “ERA came to us with no brand and nothing built to walk through. So, our work consisted of a brand and an immersive website, created together simultaneously, one creative direction from the first sketch of the logo to the last frame of animation.

“There’s so much real estate on the market now that a landing page with a downloadable presentation doesn't cut it anymore,” he explains. “You need an immersive page that presents and more than that, one with an idea behind it. A page that presents, a listing to explore. That’s the most workable format a developer needs to launch right now. Proven.

“Until construction finishes, the website is the product,” he concludes. “It has to make an unbuilt place feel real.”

Design core: “The identity is rooted in the place itself,” says Ivan Chopei. “Along the Costa del Sol, bougainvillea cascades down the facades of every building, so we made it the signature of the brand. We produced original bougainvillea footage and motion and let it spill into the frame the way it spills over the architecture.

“The color system followed the stone, sea, light and the magenta of bougainvillea, carried into the site as functional color coding, not just a decoration,” he continues.

Challenges: “Building the brand and the website at the same time, from zero, under one direction,” says Stepenko. “Most projects inherit an identity and translate it to screen. Here, the identity didn’t exist yet, so nothing got translated—it just continued. The hard part was keeping emotion and utility in one system, an atmospheric site that can’t transact is a mood board and a listing with no atmosphere is a spreadsheet. Off-plan needs both.”

Technology: “Built on Webflow with GSAP,” explains Stepenko. “Horizontal scroll, parallax and custom interactions sit on top of the Webflow stack is the proof that award-level work doesn’t require leaving Webflow. The site is smooth enough that the still frames hold up on their own, so the screenshots in the gallery are straight from the live build.”