The Nutcracker: A digital story in motion

Years ago, when my kids were small, we spent time with an interactive library on the iPad that felt genuinely delightful, not because it was flashy, but because it understood what a story is. One of the experiences was The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, a living story where pages turned like a book and illustrations moved just enough to deepen the moment without interrupting it. It wasn’t trying to be a cartoon. It was still a story meant to be read. That experience stayed with me because it proved something simple and important. People don’t mind being led. They just don’t want to be disrupted.

That memory started shaping how I think about websites. A book has an index. It has chapters. It has a rhythm that helps you know where you are and where to go next. Old books, especially, have always held my attention because they can be ornamental page by page without stealing the story. The design is not competing with the words, it’s supporting them. It’s saying, this matters enough to be made well.

I started wondering what it might look like to design websites in that same spirit, lovely and thoughtful while still robust and useful. Not just practical, but captivating in the truest sense of the word. People can be captivated by beauty and drawn deeper by story, and that is something most businesses are trying to do whether they name it that way or not. They want someone to arrive, feel something, and stay long enough to trust what they’ve found. And whether we like it or not, that first touchpoint, the opening chapter of a relationship with a business, often happens online.

So, I decided to build a story.

I built the Nutcracker as a living, scrolling experience rather than a static page. If you’d like to see the project itself, it lives here:
https://the-nutcracker.squarespace.com

I chose The Nutcracker because it’s been part of my life for years. I collect nutcrackers. I love the music from the ballet. For a long time, I went to see the ballet at the Keller Auditorium, and now I watch my nieces perform it at their small-town dance studio, so it was already in my bloodstream as December arrived. The story itself is not sprawling, but it has distinct scenes and clear movement through different spaces. It has pacing built in, so it gave me a structure I already understood, which meant I could focus on what I was really studying. Motion, timing, and narrative design.

This is where Adagio entered the picture. I’ve been a long-time student of Rache De Luna’s work through Standout Squarespace and now Standout Shopify, and her teaching has shaped my confidence as a designer in lasting ways. Adagio, in particular, opened up a new layer of possibility. The ability to implement layered, intentional motion inside Squarespace with a handful of carefully placed keywords makes experimentation faster and more accessible, especially for a designer like me who is still learning. It expanded what I could bring to life online in a way that felt empowering rather than overwhelming.

I’ll share this here plainly, because transparency matters to me. I’m an affiliate for Standout, and I recommend it because it has genuinely changed the way I work. If you’re a designer who wants to understand Squarespace at a deeper level, it’s a resource I trust and return to often.

There was a point where I thought I would push the “book” metaphor further, adding more horizontal scroll and trying to make it feel even more like turning pages. But it became too much, and not in a poetic way. It was heavy and slowed the site down, which was the moment the project taught me its clearest lesson …

If the experience doesn’t move smoothly, the story can’t do its job. If the page loads like molasses, the beauty becomes a barrier. So I removed pieces, simplified others, and chose restraint because restraint was what served the reader.

That is what I mean when I say scroll-worthy.

Scroll-worthy is not a cheap hook or a trick. It’s the feeling of being cared for as you move through an experience. It’s when a person wants to keep going because what they’re seeing feels intriguing and intentional, and because it respects their attention instead of trying to steal it. Marketing has cheapened “storytelling” in many spheres of design, turning it into a tactic that treats people like a means to an end. I don’t want that. If story is going to be part of selling, it should be selling with integrity. It should honor the person reading. It should create an experience that feels like someone made it thoughtfully, for a human being, not for an algorithm.

From the beginning, I knew what I wanted this project to accomplish. I wasn’t just placing animations and hoping they looked good. I was thinking in scenes. How does the tree grow as Clara wakes up. How does music enter without overpowering the moment. How do moving blocks give someone a sense of play, the ability to arrange elements, almost like stepping into the world and interacting with it.

It felt lighthearted, and it was lighthearted, but it was also serious study. I’m proud of how it turned out because it did what I hoped it would do. It helped me practice building an experience one moment at a time while still holding an overarching idea.

It also clarified something about my role as a designer.

I’m not simply building websites. I’m practicing creative direction, helping businesses shape entire ecosystems that support their goals through story, pacing, and experience. Design isn’t just what something looks like. It’s how it moves, how it feels, and how it guides someone from one moment to the next. This project gave me a contained place to test those ideas, to make decisions that prioritized the experience over my own impulse to add more.

If you’re a small business owner reading this, I hope it invites you to think differently about how people encounter you online. Where is the first touchpoint. What does someone feel when they arrive. Motion and interactivity can help when they’re used the way a good host uses lighting, music, and layout, to make people feel welcome and oriented rather than rushed.

And if you’re a designer, I hope this gives you permission to step outside the daily cycle of production and make something simply because you want to learn. The Nutcracker is timeless as music, as story, as art, and working on it brought me back to the kind of old-world, artisan, thoughtful design I love, the kind that values ornament and pacing without sacrificing function. Sometimes the fastest way back to your voice is to build something that isn’t billable, something that reminds you why you started in the first place.

That’s what this project was for. Practice, craft, and a return to what lasts.