This site, designed and built by hand
The easiest case study to verify is the one you're already inside. valderas.be is designed and coded end to end by me: no framework, no page builder, no template bought off a shelf. Every layout, every interaction, and every line of the code serving it is mine. It's the shortest proof I can offer that “design and build” is one motion, not two roles.
No framework, on purpose
A portfolio is a place to show your hand, so I didn't hide it behind a framework. The site is static HTML generated with Eleventy and Nunjucks templates, styled with hand-written CSS, and driven by vanilla JavaScript in small modules, each feature its own file that exposes one init function, orchestrated from a single entry point. There is no React, no Vue, no build pipeline beyond turning templates into files, and zero runtime dependencies: nothing ships to your browser that I didn't write. That's a deliberate constraint. It keeps the site fast, keeps me close to the metal, and means the craft on the surface is backed by craft in the code, not by a library doing the work for me.
The details are the point
The interaction work is where a design engineer earns the title. The custom cursor, the magnetic buttons that lean toward your pointer, the reveal animations as sections enter, the marquee, the playful sticker bar on the portrait, and the canvas you can draw on: all hand-built, and all written to respect prefers-reduced-motion and pointer type, so the flourishes never get in the way of someone who doesn't want them. Designing an interaction and implementing it are the same task here, which is exactly the point: the person who designed the interaction is the one who shipped it, so nothing gets lost in translation.
Accessibility and privacy, decided in the code
The things that matter most aren't visible, and they're build decisions as much as design ones. Every page has a skip link and a real content landmark; motion is gated behind reduced-motion; and there's a full accessibility statement rather than a checkbox. On privacy, the site loads no analytics and sets no tracking cookies until you explicitly consent, and when you do, the analytics run through my own first-party reverse proxy on an EU host, not a third-party script phoning home. Static hosting in the EU keeps the whole thing simple and sovereign.
Most portfolios describe the work. This one is the work: the same brain designed the interface, wrote the frontend, and set up the hosting. If you want to know whether I can design something and then actually ship it, you already have your answer, you're standing in it.
Under the hood
Curious how a specific interaction is built? Ask me and I'll walk you through the source, or read the credits for the tools and type that went into it.