Bespoke, not boilerplate
If two of my sites look the same, I’ve done my job badly. Every project gets its own typography, voice, and visual logic.
The studio
One developer.
Many opinions.
Ethan Barnes · Founder, designer, developer
I started Barnes because I kept noticing the same thing: small businesses with brilliant work and websites that didn't do them justice. Page-builder beige. Stock photos. Footer copyrights stuck in 2019.
I make the opposite of that. Sites with a point of view. I work as one person, end to end: brand conversation, design, build, launch, and the small ongoing tweaks that keep things sharp.
My background is in front-end engineering and digital marketing analytics, which means I care about how a site looks and what it actually does for your business. The design has to perform. The numbers have to make sense.
I'd rather build five things I'm proud of a year than fifty I'm not.
What I believe
A few house rules.
End-to-end ownership
Brand conversation, design, build, launch — same person the whole way. No broken telephone between teams, no diluted vision between phases.
You own everything
Your code, your hosting, your domain, your accounts. No platform lock-in, no rented page-builders, no surprise renewals.
Plain English
I won’t tech-speak you into circles. If something is a bad idea I’ll say so. If something is great, I’ll fight for it.