Pierdology

This is my first complete project on Webflow, so I faced all the challenges you’d expect a novice to encounter – how to properly structure the CMS collection, how to make it look good on and function properly on different devices, how to go beyond Webflow’s standard features...

After moving to Poland, I soon realized a lot of the words people speak in daily life are not taught in language schools. The word “pierdolić” in particular caught my attention because it has so many variations and can be used in countless situations.

At the same time, I was learning Webflow and realized that CMS collections would be a great way to present all the “pierdolić” variations in a clean, well-structured way.

I started playing around on Figma to figure out how to translate this content into a website. Since it’s focused on words, I knew typography (one of my passions) would take center stage. It’s also a very simple website, so I constantly asked myself what was necessary: do I need a navbar? Do I need a contact page? And so on.

Above all, I wanted it to be fun – we’re talking about swear words here! So apart from adding funny examples, I decided to use very soft pastel colors, to provide a visual contrast to the heavy language. Colors also played an important role when differentiating the perfective (“–pierdolić”) and imperfective (“–pierdalać”) variations. Since they’re both sides of the same coin, inverting the color scheme did the trick.

All the information on the homepage, including background colors, comes from just one CMS collection. I experimented with Webflow’s native slider and JavaScript libraries (Swiper, Splide), but wasn’t able to achieve the desired results. The solution that ticked all the boxes ended up being Finsweet Attributes’ CMS Slider.

Once everything seemed to be ready, came the humbling experience of running quality checks on different devices. I used Google Chrome’s DevTools to simulate the experience on different devices, but nothing beats real tests with real users. Thankfully, my friends were kind enough to point out all the big and small issues they encountered.

Looking back at the experience, I’m happy to have chosen such an unorthodox project that forced me to deal with many different aspects of web development. I learned how to use animations as a workaround to Webflow limitations (figuring out the pierdolić <> pierdalać toggle was quite a journey), experimented with different relative units (turns out sometimes VW is the best unit for text), and was able to feel how it is to own a web project from start to finish.

Most importantly, I went over (or around) every obstacle, had fun doing it, and ended up receiving an award!