Responses by Nathan Dallaire, creative developer; and Brandon Levesque, art director and designer, CUSP.

Background: “The purpose of the site was to relaunch Los Angeles–based furniture design studio Lusano from the ground up,” says Brandon Levesque. “Weaving its heritage into visual storytelling, we did a rename, new brand identity and a new site, reintroducing it into the marketplace as a small furniture brand that handcrafts all its pieces. The main target audience is people looking for high-end furniture and interior designers, so we wanted to build a site that felt high quality and took inspiration from physical moodboards into its overall navigation design. We wanted users to have a seamless browsing experience and be able to jump from product to product without having to go back to a single page and scroll to view them.”

Design core: “The core feature of the site is the scrollable canvas grid on the homepage,” says Levesque. “It’s different from a typical e-commerce build because, as the core audience is interior designers, we wanted to offer them an experience that felt more akin to the experience of browsing pieces in a physical space. The primary design style is thoughtful minimalism, with subtle design choices that harken to Lusano’s historic ethos and process. We created this blend using a serif with a history, a warm color palette to give it richness and a subtle grid pattern on the homepage that ties into the brand’s architectural roots.”

Challenges: “Across the homepage, the page transitions, and the grid and column views, the page transitions were the most time consuming and technically demanding. They were fun to build but took significant trial and error to get right,” says Nathan Dallaire. “Transitions between pages versus transitions between products required different patterns, which meant combining Framer, GSAP and custom JavaScript to create a consistent, polished system.

“The homepage was another major lift,” he continues. “I specifically wanted to build everything in HTML rather than relying on Canvas, which introduced additional complexity—especially around scaling calculations and handling Safari’s shortcomings, which required a number of polyfills. The intro animation featuring the cards also took considerable refinement. Despite the challenges, the end result was worth the effort. We were able to produce smooth, distinctive transitions and interactions that feel unique.”

Technology: “The site was built with Next.js, deployed on Vercel and powered by Sanity for content management,” Dallaire explains. “GSAP was used extensively for animation and motion logic.”

Special technical features: “The grid and column view required more engineering than what may appear on the surface,” says Dallaire. “Swapping between these views on the products page wasn’t just a layout toggle; it depended heavily on GSAP’s Flip functionality. As users scroll in either view, the site continuously calculates scroll progress. When switching views, the interface must pick up at the exact corresponding scroll position in the alternate layout, which adds a hidden layer of complexity. The column view also uses requestAnimationFrame() for real-time updates, and those updates need to be correctly maintained during view swaps, introducing additional edge cases and considerations.”