I saw this on Twitter about an hour ago and was going build one as well. Nice work!
swyx•Feb 7, 2026
one thing i dislike about "good design" in general is that it usually takes away from information density and practical convenience in order to achieve "good design". this feels like a bad tradeoff. i wish that designers cared about making things more accessible and delightful rather than impressing fellow designers.
orphea•Feb 7, 2026
Agree. I opened this iventions website, hated every second being there, closed it.
division_by_0•Feb 7, 2026
Agree. Info-dense designs are also more difficult to implement and many designers lack experience in this area. E.g., creating a coherent design system that uses borders instead of excessive padding to separate elements is much more difficult than it may seem.
falloutx•Feb 7, 2026
Its not about information but about directing the user in this case. Not everything has to be information dense or even convenient. Sometimes you want users to scroll or make them click step buttons. (checkout is sometimes made to have more steps to give users time to adjust to pain of paying)
flaburgan•Feb 7, 2026
It looks cool, but to have to navigate from one side of the screen to the opposite one is quite suboptimal
mym1990•Feb 8, 2026
You don't have to optimize the fun out of every single thing in life.
savolai•Feb 8, 2026
On mobile, (my) thumbs are already at the locations where iventions places the toggle and the menu.
uxcolumbo•Feb 8, 2026
Neat experiment, but this is not good design.
Design is about solving problems.
A menu is suppose to help you to quickly find and get to a specific section of your site.
Why do I have to click on a thing to reveal the menu even though on my laptop there is enough space to show it all? And then I have to move my mouse all to the other side of the screen?
Who is this for?
Nothing wrong with experimenting with CSS, but avoid ‘dribbblizing’ your designs if you intend to ship it to users who use your site for information or to get a job done.
Edit: commenting more on the iventions.com website where this effect is in use.
hippo22•Feb 8, 2026
“I have a cool idea in my head that I’d like to show other people” is a problem that some people need to solve.
mym1990•Feb 8, 2026
Iventions site is clearly a showcase and uses maximalism, which is most definitely a design philosophy. Design may about solving problems, but the fact that you feel entitled to think that you know the problem that Iventions is trying to solve, and also that they are doing it wrong is very presumptuous.
peckemys•Feb 8, 2026
> Who is this for ?
This effect imitates a spotlight, which is cited on the page and quite relevant for a company in the arts domain
rhplus•Feb 8, 2026
Flashback to the days of Macromedia Flash.
elian55•Feb 8, 2026
Hola
felineflock•Feb 8, 2026
Good job! Looks amazing!
It is a great way to call attention to content.
AlexAplin•Feb 8, 2026
I'm pretty forgiving about accessibility (I'm able to say this at all because I don't have to rely rigidly on accessibility tools) but nav menus feel like a baseline we shouldn't muck with. Tabbing doesn't seem to respond very well in the live example, and at least in the limited demo you can't expand the listing without using a mouse (I thought it would respond to a space with the :checked pseudo, but seems not).
jackomelon•Feb 8, 2026
Very neat.
todotask2•Feb 8, 2026
You made me recalled we made something similar with growing circular on mobile menu the last decade. It was cool for our marketing event website.
Gabrys1•Feb 8, 2026
calc(1.42 * 100vmax)
is the same as
142vmax
Just saying :-)
bmacho•Feb 8, 2026
Is there a demo? The link points to a github repo, and github pages is not active
14 Comments
Design is about solving problems.
A menu is suppose to help you to quickly find and get to a specific section of your site.
Why do I have to click on a thing to reveal the menu even though on my laptop there is enough space to show it all? And then I have to move my mouse all to the other side of the screen?
Who is this for?
Nothing wrong with experimenting with CSS, but avoid ‘dribbblizing’ your designs if you intend to ship it to users who use your site for information or to get a job done.
Edit: commenting more on the iventions.com website where this effect is in use.
This effect imitates a spotlight, which is cited on the page and quite relevant for a company in the arts domain
is the same as
142vmax
Just saying :-)