Performance work usually arrives at the end of a project as a punch list: compress this image, defer that script, remove this animation. Treating it as clean-up implies it was never actually part of the design — and that's exactly the problem.
A budget changes what gets proposed
When a performance budget exists before the first mockup, "full-bleed autoplay video hero" simply doesn't make the shortlist — not because it's forbidden, but because it's weighed against its real cost from the start, the same way a print designer weighs paper stock or page count.
The alternative is a worse conversation
Cutting an already-approved effect after a client has seen it in a polished mockup is a much harder conversation than never proposing it. Performance-as-afterthought doesn't avoid that trade-off — it just moves it later and makes it more expensive.
