Sign Your Work: The Quiet Case for a Credits Page

There is a page most creative websites do not have, and for a long time that felt like the correct decision. Your homepage does the introducing. Your portfolio does the showing. Your contact page does the asking. Anything else risks looking like a drawer full of receipts. But I have been noticing a small, welcome shift: the credits page is coming back. Not as a grand statement, just as a quiet line in the footer. And I think more of us should follow.

In print, the colophon was never the main event. It sat at the back of the book and told you the typeface, the paper stock, the printer, sometimes the city it was made in. It was practical information dressed as a footnote. On a website, a colophon can do the same job: explain how the thing in front of you was made, who helped, and what choices were made along the way. It is not a humblebrag. It is a signature.

What a credits page actually does

A colophon builds trust in a way that a services page cannot. When someone can see that you have chosen a typeface deliberately, credited a photographer properly and named the CMS you actually use, they stop guessing about how you work. They can see the joins. For a UK creative practice, where so much work happens through small networks and word of mouth, that matters. A potential client might not know your name, but they might know the studio that built your site, or the illustrator you thanked at the bottom. A credits page gives them a way in.

It also makes your site feel inhabited. A portfolio can be very polished and still feel like a showroom. A short credits page says a person made this, with a set of tools and a set of preferences. That is a different kind of confidence. It is not shouting about your process. It is leaving the door ajar.

The case against turning it into a CV

The risk is obvious. A credits page can become a list of every plugin you have ever installed, every font you have ever downloaded, every coffee you drank while coding. That is not a colophon. That is a browser history. The best versions are short, specific and human. They tell a reader what they need to know, not everything you know.

A useful test is to ask what you would tell a curious friend in a pub. You would probably mention the typeface, the platform, the photographer and the person who helped with the copy. You would not recite your CSS framework. Keep that in mind and the page will stay on the right side of useful.

A simple template to steal

You do not need a design system for this. A few plain blocks will do. I would start with five headings and write no more than a sentence or two under each.

Built with. Name the platform, theme or framework, and any plugins that do real work. If you built it by hand, say so. If you used a template, say that too. There is no shame in either. Something like: Built on WordPress with a custom theme, hosted in the UK.

Set in. List the typefaces and where they came from. This is where you credit the foundry properly. If you used an open-source face, link to it. If you licensed something from a small independent foundry, name them. Type designers are collaborators too.

Pictured. Credit photography, illustration and any stock imagery. If you took the photos yourself, say so. If a friend lent you a studio, thank them. This is also where you put image licences, especially if you use Creative Commons material. It keeps you honest and it helps the next person who is trying to work out where a picture came from.

Made with. A short line about the tools that shaped the work. Maybe it was Figma, maybe it was a notebook, maybe it was a scanner and a stack of old magazines. This is the bit that adds personality without asking for applause.

Thanks. Name the people who helped. The editor who caught the typos. The developer who fixed the mobile menu. The friend who told you the orange was too much. A credits page is a good place to be generous, and generosity reads well.

If you want to add a note on accessibility, privacy or hosting, do it here too. A line about why you chose a particular font size or why the site does not use cookies can be more persuasive than a whole page of policy language.

Where it goes and how it sounds

Put it in the footer, near the copyright line, and call it Colophon or Credits. Do not bury it. Do not make people hunt. A single link is enough. The page itself can be as short as 150 words or as long as a comfortable scroll. The tone should match the rest of your site. If your homepage is dry and direct, keep the colophon dry and direct. If your work is playful, let a little of that through. The point is not to perform transparency. It is to be transparent in your own voice.

One practical note: update it when things change. A credits page that lists a font you stopped using three years ago is worse than no page at all. It is a small maintenance job, but it is the kind of small job that keeps a site feeling alive.

The quiet confidence of showing your working

We are often told to make our websites look effortless. A credits page does the opposite. It shows the effort, but in a calm way. It says: here are the materials, here are the people, here is the thinking. That is not a lack of confidence. It is a different kind of confidence, the kind that does not need to pretend the work appeared fully formed.

So if you have a spare hour this week, add a colophon. Start with the font. Start with the photographer. Start with the person who helped you name the site. You do not need to make it perfect. You just need to sign your work.