> Futureground

After spending 10 years in Hong Kong and a career in Finance, I reached a point where I wanted to find purpose. I wanted to build something of my own.

So I took a leap of faith and moved to Thailand.

Futureground was created with a vision to build a unique space connecting people through electronic music and immersive light installations.

For a year, we tried to bring that vision to life in Southern Thailand. But the legal landscape made it difficult to move forward with peace of mind. So we decided to store the seed and wait for better conditions, in a better place, at a better time.

While the original vision is finding its new home, Futureground as a whole continues to evolve.

We launched Futureground Studio to amplify talented creators through cinematic storytelling. And through Futureground Sound, we continue to share the music we love through cinematic DJ sets.

With a bigger vision, we needed a new website. So I decided to build it.

>> Choosing the Tool

I was already using Cursor for another project.

Then OpenAI launched its Codex native app, at no extra cost to my ChatGPT Plus membership.

Voila! I took it as sign to test it properly.

>> The Design Process

This was my first time building a proper website, and I quickly learned coding was not the hardest challenge. Design was.

In the age of AI, I’m convinced that taste is the new gold standard. When anyone can generate code, developing an “eye” for what is good vs. what is great will be how one stands out.

My first attempt, despite using ChatGPT to build a detailed prompt, was a total flop.

Classic garbage-in-garbage-out.

I relied on text prompts alone and gave the model nothing visual to anchor to.

So I changed approach.

I browsed through hundreds of award-winning websites on Awwwards to find inspiration. I made a list of what I liked and disliked.

“Scrollytelling” is flashy and creative, but as a user I actually hated it. I wanted something fast, simple, and nearly scroll-free.

I drew a simple landing page on paper and fed it to Google Nano Banana to generate a visual reference.

Once I had a starting structure, I took a screenshot of the landing page and asked Claude how to refine the design.

To give the site a bit more depth and movement, I layered in a background shader from 21st dev.

>> Tech Stack

• >Next.js - Full-stack framework
• >Tailwind CSS + React - Styling/UI
• >Bunny.net - Video hosting (for lag-free embeds)
• >Vercel - Deployment
• >Codex + Claude - Vibe coding tools

>> Lessons Learned

I built everything on my 27” desktop monitor. I thought the work was done… Until I asked my partner to open the site on his computer.

Same size screen. But somehow the layout completely broke. Alignments shifted and elements stacked awkwardly.

I completely missed responsive design in my initial build. And it took far more iteration that I expected to fix it. I won't let that happen again.

>> Closing Thoughts

AI makes building a website easier. But building a beautiful website is still hard.

I believe taste is a muscle. And like any muscle, it grows through exposure and repetition.

If I want to build better products, I need to train that muscle deliberately - to understand why certain things feel beautiful while others fall flat, and to slowly develop a taste of my own.