Baiba Sturite rose to fame thanks to her two bestsellers and a popular YouTube channel focused on personal growth. When you Google her name, you’ll find bookstores and social media profiles.

But Baiba’s work goes far beyond that — as someone who’s been through her own long journey of trial and error, she helps people tackle their toughest challenges. That’s why we needed to create a portfolio website that highlights all her services and skills.

 — Researched tons of astrologer websites, both local and international
 — Held several in-depth interviews with Baiba
 — Came up with three creative concepts
 — Interviewed Baiba to gather content for the website
 — Said a little prayer before kicking off the first phase
 — Organized a huge amount of info into clear sections
 — Wrote texts in three distinct styles
 — Designed the overall look and feel
 — Helped the design team level up their skills
 — Built a longread on Webflow
 — Added interactive features, animations, and music
 — Haven’t gone broke
 — Made the website mobile-friendly
 — Translated everything and created an English version of the website
 — Got emotional with Baiba at our final project meeting
 — And handed her a bouquet of roses

For every project, we pitch three creative concepts. These are quick, focused presentations that help clients explore different angles on the website’s future content, design, and overall vibe.

From our very first chat with Baiba, it was clear a simple landing page wouldn’t cut it. She wasn’t just looking to list her services, she wanted the website to tell the story of her growth, both as a professional and as a person.

So, with input from Baiba, some bold ideas from our brand chef Egor, and a few intense brainstorms, we came up with three creative directions:

1. The Hero’s Journey

This concept reimagines her biography as an epic journey — a series of key life moments told with cinematic visuals and a clear timeline. It’s all about drawing people in with great storytelling and standout design.

2. The Book of Life

Here, the website becomes a living artifact — a personal chronicle that unfolds like a magical book. Think handwritten notes in the margins, old photos, short video clips — little pieces that make it feel personal and real.

3. The Late-Night Talk Show

This concept brings in the energy of a late-night show — part interview, part entertainment, part controlled chaos. Bold questions, juicy details, layered media inserts, and a playful tone make it feel like you’re watching a story unfold in real time.

Writing the prototype for this special project was a completely different process than our chief editor’s usual routine. There was no way to get it done with just a quick 15-question brief and five days to write all the content.

To gather background info, Nastya watched about a dozen interviews with Russian and international journalists and created a long list of questions covering everything from tough investigative angles to casual, heartfelt conversations. We narrowed the list down from sixty questions to a final set, which Baiba approved.

We conducted the interview and heard all the key moments from Baiba’s life in detail. Then we reviewed client chats and phone calls to find important quotes. At first, turning all that into a written story seemed pretty straightforward.

But organizing it all turned out to be tricky. There was so much info, every idea seemed valuable and interesting, and some pieces didn’t quite fit stylistically. In addition, there weren’t any smooth transitions between topics.

For weeks, Nastya played around with different combinations, piecing the text together like Lego blocks to make it feel cohesive. She nearly lost her mind trying to sort everything by topic — but it paid off: she ended up with 37 solid sections.

Later, when it came time to design, Nastya grouped those sections into eight chapters and arranged them to ease readers into the Book’s story.

It was clear that a standard biographical format wouldn’t capture the attention of Baiba’s potential clients. We needed a way to ease readers into the story. That’s when Nastya came up with a structure that split each chapter into three parallel threads:

— Interview: Baiba’s answers to big, sometimes tough existential questions — crafted to spark curiosity about who she is and what the website is really about.

— Info Cards: A mix of links to her projects, social media, books, and services — plus quick facts that highlight the website’s core message.

— Biography: A third-person story about how Baiba evolved — personally and professionally.

Another thing that surprised the team was the sheer size of the prototype — nearly 46,000 pixels long.

Just to make it more clear (if you’re not a designer), one screen on a website is about 800 pixels tall. A typical 12-section website (which is what we originally proposed) adds up to around 10,000 pixels in height. By this point, we had exceeded the original scope by more than four times.

This is where another key player in our story came in — lead designer Nastya. We always trust her with the toughest projects, and Baiba’s wasn’t any different.

At an e-b agency, it’s never just about "drawing something." We need metaphors, ideas, and serious effort. So first, we asked Baiba to share some pics to work with. What started as a small favor quickly turned into this:

An enormous amount of content — and that’s just a brief summary of each step we took on the project.

For visuals, we worked with two archives of old photos, 75 recent photoshoots, 15 scans from Baiba’s personal journals, and a huge collection of colorful magazine and newspaper clippings — not to mention unlimited access to Midjourney and 12 stock photo websites.

Our goal was to create a unique style that blends the vibes of TV shows, books, and personal diaries. We drew inspiration from a wide range of sources — from The National Enquirer tabloid to Oppenheimer movie posters to Hitchcock fan art.

To make the reader’s journey through each chapter more engaging, we visually highlighted the different parts:

— Interviews appeared as paper collages.
— Information blocks were clean and organized, highlighting the key marketing points.
— Biography sections were dark and emotional.

As project demands kept piling up, we brought interns onto the design team. Under Nastya’s careful supervision, they spent entire days creating screens. With 18 people working together, we turned 100,000 pixels into a unique, interactive experience for the website users.

We wanted every screen to stand out, so we refused to settle for anything less than exceptional.

The project was so large that we had to create a second Figma file because the first one stopped loading.

There were countless mistakes, moments of doubt, and stressful situations throughout. Despite the interns' active help, Nastya still hit a breaking point — as a highly responsible person, she stayed up late many nights to finish the design on time (and we had no idea). By the end of the second month, she was feeling completely overwhelmed.

Thankfully, New Year’s came right in the middle of the project, giving her two weeks off to recharge. After the break, Nastya got back on track and powered through to finish the design.

The biggest challenge in this whole nightmare—at least judging by the team’s mood—was the coding. After finishing the design for the first chapter, we realized that the platform hosting our website, Tilda, simply couldn’t handle such a complex design with so many elements.

We suggested switching to Webflow and gave Baiba a heads-up that it’d cost more. Not every client would’ve gone for it — our budget had already ballooned, and we were still in the red. But Baiba and the whole team were set on creating a masterpiece, so we didn’t hold back on effort or resources.

Baiba gave us the green light, so we started looking for a Webflow developer. We’d never worked with one before, but hey — if you’re afraid of a challenge, you don’t belong at e—b. Just before New Year’s, we found someone, showed him the designs for a couple of chapters, and told him there’d be eight in total. He crunched the numbers (or maybe just made a wild guess). We agreed and planned to kick things off in January.

When January came and we were ready to start, the developer suddenly backed out. We got quotes from others and were floored — coding just one chapter would cost nearly as much as the total budget. And we still had eight more to build.

We’d already agreed with Baiba to increase the budget, so asking for even more was off the table.

Luckily, we caught a break. After a long and frustrating search, we finally found a developer willing to work within our tight budget. We were upfront: there was no wiggle room, but we really needed his help.

What came next was a long haul—animations, screen adaptations, bug fixes, and a full English translation. But on September 6, 2024—exactly one year after we began—we finally sent the client those magic words: "The website is officially live."

Website of the day at CSS Design Awards
Honorable Mention at Awwwards