8 Personal Websites That Made Me Want to Burn Mine Down (And Start Again)

When I decided to rebuild my personal website recently, one thing I did was look at what other people had built.

That was a mistake. And also the best thing I did.

Because there’s a useful phase — where you’re absorbing sensibilities, clocking what resonates, building taste. And then there’s the second phase, where inspiration quietly turns into anxiety.

The sites that stuck with me most weren’t the most technically impressive. They were the ones where I felt like I understood the person within about ten seconds.

Here are the 8 that hit hardest — and what each one taught me.

1. Bruno Simon — bruno-simon.com

This isn’t a portfolio. It’s a playable 3D world built with Three.js where you drive a tiny car through someone’s work.

It’s absurd. It’s brilliant. And it communicates something no resume bullet ever could: this person plays seriously.

Takeaway: Don’t tell people what you can do — make them feel it.

2. Jesse Zhou — jesse-zhou.com

You open the site to a loading bar that says “Cooking your ramen…” and then you’re thrown into an interactive ramen shop that surprises you at every turn.

Same logic as Bruno Simon, completely different energy. Wildly specific. Wildly effective.

Takeaway: Constraints breed personality. Committing to one weird idea beats ten safe ones.

3. Brittany Chiang — brittanychiang.com

The quiet standard for developer portfolios. Dark mode. Great information architecture. Work front and center. It doesn’t try to dazzle you — it trusts its own substance.

One of the most-forked portfolios on GitHub, and for good reason.

Takeaway: If your work is strong, get out of its way.

4. Sharlee (Charles Bruyerre) — itssharl.ee

Threads the needle between graphic design sensibility and web development chops. Restrained, bilingual, composed. The kind of site that feels effortless because every decision was intentional.

Takeaway: Personality doesn’t have to be loud to be felt.

5. Monica Dinculescu — meowni.ca

Real artistic minimalism. Generative art you can click to regenerate. Writing that sounds like a person. Navigation that feels like browsing a friend’s apartment.

Takeaway: Your differences are your competitive advantage.

6. Bonnie Xu — bonniexu.com

Clean, warm, personal. A site that feels genuinely crafted — not assembled from a template. Shows that strong visual taste alone is a statement.

Takeaway: Aesthetics are a form of communication.

7. Sean O’Brien — seanobrien.com.au

Focused storytelling. No distractions, no gimmicks — just clarity about who he is and what he does. The kind of restraint that’s harder to pull off than it looks.

Takeaway: Clarity beats quantity every time.

8. Adam Hartwig — adamhartwig.co.uk

A multi-disciplinary designer/developer who uses his own site as a living experiment. Skills visualised as an interactive solar system. Multiple Awwwards and FWA site-of-the-day wins.

Takeaway: The way you present information is part of your work.

The Pattern Behind All of Them

These sites look nothing alike.

But they share one thing: they are unmistakably the person who made them.

The question to ask isn’t “what does a portfolio look like?”

It’s “what do I look like on the internet?”

I’m still busy rebuilding my site, I’ve recently gone through a similar spiral — wondering what to put inside it. I wrote about the whole process here.

No one can really tell you what your website should be.

Not trends. Not examples. Not even this.

At some point, it just comes down to clarity - what you keep, what you remove, and what actually feels like you.

And usually, it’s less than you think.