Watch any Wes Anderson film for five minutes and you'll notice something that most directors never achieve in an entire career: every single frame is considered. Not just the characters in the foreground. Not just the dialogue or the plot. Everything. The wallpaper pattern behind a character's head. The typeface on a fictional newspaper. The precise shade of a suitcase. The distance between objects on a shelf. Anderson doesn't just direct his films. He designs them, down to the last pixel - or in his case, the last thread on a character's jumper.
I've thought about this obsessiveness a lot while building products. Not because I think websites should look like Wes Anderson films - that would be a very specific niche. But because the principle behind his work applies directly to digital design: the details you think nobody will notice are the details that make something feel exceptional.
Anderson's films work because of a set of design principles that are remarkably transferable. Constraint. Symmetry. Palette restriction. Typographic consistency. Attention to backgrounds. A willingness to be opinionated about aesthetics even when it would be easier to be generic. These aren't just film techniques. They're product design principles.
The power of palette restriction
Anderson restricts his colour palettes ruthlessly. Each film has a dominant palette - the dusty pinks and reds of The Grand Budapest Hotel, the ochres and browns of Fantastic Mr Fox, the aquatic blues and yellows of The Life Aquatic. Nothing in the frame contradicts the palette. If a colour appears, it was chosen. If it was chosen, it serves the whole.
This is the single most transferable lesson for product design. Most websites and apps use too many colours. They introduce a new shade for every component, a different hue for every state, a fresh accent for every section. The result is visual noise - a subtle, unconscious feeling that something is off, even if the user can't articulate why.
When I built Modern Retro, I learned this lesson viscerally. The 1970s aesthetic works because of its constraints - the warm amber tones, the harvest golds, the avocado greens. Every image in the collection shares a palette. Remove one colour and the whole thing collapses. Add one wrong colour and the illusion breaks. The palette isn't a decoration. It is the architecture.
Monocle and Bloomberg Businessweek - two publications I admire enormously - understand this. Their designs work not because of what they include but because of what they exclude. Every colour, every shadow, every gradient serves the whole. Nothing is decorative. Everything is structural.
Symmetry as communication
Anderson's symmetrical compositions are his most recognisable signature. Characters centred in frame. Doorways, hallways, and corridors shot dead-on. Objects arranged with mathematical precision. It's so distinctive that it has become a visual shorthand - "that's very Wes Anderson" is something people say about any perfectly centred, carefully arranged image.
But symmetry in Anderson's work isn't just aesthetic. It communicates something. It creates a sense of order and control that makes the moments of chaos - and there are many in his films - feel more impactful. The rigid frame makes the messy humanity more visible, not less. The structure is what allows the emotion to land.
Web design works the same way. A well-structured grid doesn't make a page feel rigid. It makes the elements that break the grid feel intentional. A pull quote that spans two columns. A hero image that bleeds to the edge. A single splash of colour against a monochrome palette. These moments of controlled disruption only work because the surrounding structure is disciplined. Without the discipline, there's nothing to disrupt.
The background is the product
Most product designers focus on the foreground - the buttons, the forms, the hero sections, the calls to action. The background is treated as filler. A generic gradient. A stock pattern. A solid colour chosen because it doesn't offend. Anderson would find this horrifying.
In Anderson's films, the background is as considered as the foreground. The books on a shelf are specific titles chosen for their spines. The paintings on a wall are original pieces commissioned for the film. The pattern on a carpet matches the pattern on the curtains which matches the pattern on a character's tie. Nothing is arbitrary. Nothing is fill.
This translates directly. The background texture on this portfolio site - the subtle dot grid, the blurred colour blobs, the gradient overlays - these are details that most visitors will never consciously register. But they would notice if they were gone. They create a feeling of depth and craft that a flat white background can't. They communicate that someone cared about every layer, not just the obvious ones.
Typography as character
Anderson uses typography obsessively. His preferred typeface, Futura, appears in nearly every film. Title cards, signs, letters, passports, invitations - all set in carefully chosen fonts that feel period-appropriate and tonally precise. The typography isn't just labelling. It is worldbuilding. It tells you what kind of world you're in before a single word of dialogue.
Products that feel premium almost always have considered typography. Not just "we chose a nice font" but genuine typographic thinking - how the heading font relates to the body font, how type sizes create hierarchy, how letter spacing changes at different scales, how the monospace font for code or metadata creates contrast with the serif used for headlines. These choices compound. Each one is small. Together, they're enormous.
DM Serif Display and Inter - the fonts on this site - weren't chosen randomly. The serif creates warmth and personality in headlines. The sans-serif creates clarity in body text. The monospace creates precision in metadata. Three fonts, three roles, zero overlap. Anderson would approve, I think. Or at least he wouldn't disapprove, which from Anderson might be the highest praise available.
Designing with opinion
The thing I admire most about Anderson is his refusal to be neutral. His aesthetic is divisive. Some people find it precious, mannered, overly controlled. That is fine. It isn't for everyone, and he has never pretended it is. He has a point of view, and every frame expresses it. There's no scene in a Wes Anderson film that could have been directed by anyone else.
Most product design is the opposite. It's designed to be inoffensive. To appeal to the widest possible audience. To follow the conventions so closely that it could have been made by anyone. The result is a sea of sameness - products that are perfectly functional and completely forgettable. Products that work but don't feel like anything.
The products I admire - and the products I'm trying to build - have opinions. They have aesthetics that some people love and some people find unnecessary. They make choices that prioritise feeling over pure utility. They understand that design isn't just about helping people complete tasks. It's about creating an emotional experience around those tasks. It's about making someone feel something when they use the thing you made.
Anderson taught me that the obsessive attention to detail isn't indulgence. It is the work. That the background matters as much as the foreground. That restriction creates freedom. That having a strong aesthetic point of view isn't pretension - it is generosity. You're giving people a world to inhabit, not just a tool to use.
Every product I build, I ask myself: would this pass the Anderson test? Is every element intentional? Is the palette coherent? Do the backgrounds feel considered? Is the typography telling a story? And most importantly - does this feel like it was made by someone with a point of view, or could it have been made by anyone?
If it could have been made by anyone, it isn't finished.
