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20 Best New Websites, October 2022

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The design world fluctuates back and forth, swerving between love and hate for different design trends. Sometimes we see a wide range of approaches, and sometimes designers all hop on the same idea.

This month, the web is dominated by animation. Designers are cramming in motion in unexpected ways. And it’s fun to explore. Here are 20 of the best new sites on the web this month. Enjoy!

Bannach

Bannach is a German furniture brand. Its products are colorful and geometric, so it makes sense that when you scroll down to the collection, the thumbnails begin as pixel blocks and animate into product photography.

Fornasetti Profumi

Fornasetti Profumi takes a different approach to motion. It uses video to emphasize stillness to promote the calming qualities of its candle products.

The Other Side of Truth

The Other Side of Truth is a superb exercise in utilizing the web for a cause. It presents facts on the Russia-Ukraine war, but the standout feature is the toggle switch that, instead of light mode-dark mode, toggles facts and Russian state propaganda.

Glasfurd & Walker

Glasfurd & Walker is a portfolio site for a design agency. So far, so standard. However, it sets itself apart because it’s slightly bigger than the browser and swerves left and right with your mouse movement.

Sirup 5th Anniversary

Sirup is a Japanese singer-songwriter, and to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his first hit single, his record company has put together this awesome maximalist micro-site that uses type, motion, and art direction to capture his style.

Fitzjohn’s

Fitzjohn’s is a slick site for a new apartment complex in the Hampstead area of London. It uses a refreshing modern color palette and calming animation to take the edge off the frankly ludicrous price tag.

Persepolis Reimagined

Persepolis Reimagined is an awe-inspiring WebGL tour through one of the most important cities in ancient Iran. Make sure you tour it on a large screen. It’s hard not to be wide-eyed with wonder.

JaM Cellars

JaM Cellars is a Californian wine brand that’s pitching to bachelorette parties. With names like Butter, and Sugar, it’s not the most sophisticated tipple, but yellow, we love a yellow site.

Danielle Levitt

This portfolio site for film director and photographer Danielle Levitt features samples of her best work scrolling past the viewport. There’s a clever switch of thumbnail and background color when you scroll down to the contact details.

Propel

From total color energy to Apple-levels of minimalism: Propel is a slick, animate-on-scroll site for a marine motor brand selling an outboard and inboard motor. The animated masks on the images are a nice subtle touch.

Standards

Standards is a site for a SaaS that helps organizations create, maintain, and share brand guidelines. It uses subtle animation, video of its UI, and compelling copy to sell its approach.

Chris Carruthers

The portfolio site for Chris Carruthers is deliberately self-indulgent with scrolling text, clipped images, and scroll-jacking, but it’s also delightful to peruse.

Theodore Ellison Designs

We don’t often see colored glass in real life, but the play of light on stained glass is beautiful. This site for Theodore Ellison Designs uses video to bring the effect to the web.

Owomaniya!

The Owomaniya report for 2022 uncovers the state of gender diversity in the Indian entertainment industry. Presented in the style of infographics, the information is brought to life by animation.

Meetings

Meetings is a French events company. Its site uses an animated collage approach to showcase its services, and animated text to pull you into its content.

Blakeney

Blakeney invests in African companies on behalf of institutional investors. Its site is typical of the financial industry, but it uses animation to lift it to a higher level of interest.

Becklyn

Becklyn is a digital design agency. Its portfolio site uses animated text, expanding image masks, and video to guide us through its site and app design approach.

Cabi

Cabi is a brand of Japanese condiments with a typically Japanese feeling site. Bright colors, a slowly scrolling slideshow of dishes, and editorial to pack shot hover effects are a great introduction to the brand.

Slantis

Slantis provides building information modeling to architecture and infrastructure providers. Its site uses animation to showcase the types of content it produces for clients.

July Fund

July Fund is a venture capital project. It takes an entirely different approach than its competitors by adopting a chaotic but enjoyable card-based design.

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20 Best New Websites, July 2022

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Welcome to our guide to the best new websites this month. If subtle, minimal sites are your thing, either look away now or prepare to have your preconceptions challenged because this month, we are going maximalist.

Lots of elements fill up the screen, lots of color, lots of big fonts, lots of illustration, and plenty of in-your-face personality. This is a tricky style to get right: if elements are not chosen and placed well, the result is simply annoying clutter. If done well, the result can be impactful and memorable.

[And Happy Independence Day to all of our American readers!]

screenagers & the incredible machine

screenagers & the incredible machine’s site puts illustration front and center, creating a look that evokes various mystic ideas. It sounds strange, but it works.

Anna Jóna

This prelaunch teaser site for Anna Jóna café and cinema has an elegant yet modern feel.

Hardpops

This site for Hardpops (alcoholic) ice pops takes its cue from the product flavors, and the bright, fruity colors give it a real zing.

Daniel Spatzek

Daniel Spatzek’s portfolio site takes the rules-are-made-to-be-broken approach. The result has attitude and a nice touch of humor.

Ander Agency

Plenty of color, large type, and illustration make a bold statement for Ander Agency’s single-page site.

Pretty Damn Quick

Colorful illustration on this site for Pretty Damn Quick’s Shopify app creates an impression of friendliness about the company and ease of use of the product itself.

Know Your Beetle

Know Your Beetle is a showcase page for Kaploom creative studio. Color and type combinations make a big impact.

WTFFF

While many of the sites featured here have a sense of fun about them, WTFFF tackles a somber subject: online sexual abuse and harassment. Artwork and audio create an immersive experience in which five young people share their experiences with the aim of helping others.

BelArosa Chalet

Full-screen illustrations with a hint of vintage style create an ideal impression of what future guests can expect from the currently under construction BelArosa Chalet.

Paradam

The color scheme on the Paradam site is on the pastel end of the scale, but there is still lots going on to entrance the eye.

Tilton Group

The scrolling color panels on the Tilton Group site are a thing to behold.

Fresco

Fresco uses a standard layout design, but the colors and quarter-circles instantly lift it.

Museum of Pink Art

Museum of Pink Art is an immersive experience celebrating the color pink. Undoubtedly worth a virtual wander around.

Icons by Menu

OK, this somewhat more minimalist site slipped through the net, but Icons by Menu is so pleasing to look at and use that we had to include it.

GlareDB

With an illustration that could be ideally at home on an Arthur C. Clarke book jacket and that rich, deep red background, this site for Glare DB is a world away from what might be expected.

Alex Beige

While the overall style and accent illustrations are pleasing on Alex Beige’s site, the Our Team section is guaranteed to raise a smile and stick in the user’s mind.

Snickerdoodle

Careful spacing means busy elements (like on scroll animated illustrations) don’t become overwhelming on the Snickerdoodle site.

Grisly’s Cosmic Black

The site for Grisly’s Cosmic Black is fun, bright, and joyful. Plus, it’s nice to see an alcohol site going a bit further than the usual ‘drink responsibly’ and actually providing helpful links.

The Perennial

Not just floorplans and (lots of) images, but virtual walkthroughs too. The Perennial doesn’t feel like a standard office building.

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3 Essential Design Trends, June 2022

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Are you bored with some of your current design projects? This month’s collection of website design trends can help break you out of that rut with some fun and funky alternatives.

And all of these options are anything but boring. From visual display to technique, these trends present a different set of challenges.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month.

1. Layers on Layers

These website designs have so many layers of information that you almost don’t know where to look or where the design elements start and stop.

This can be a complex technique to make work because of the number of elements competing for the same attention in the design.

What you are likely to see with this design tend includes an image or video background with some motion but not anything that truly demands attention. Then add on a few still images in smaller frames throughout the design. Layer on text as well for a three-deep effect.

If you interact with these designs, you’ll find that they are not flat either. They all include animated elements, hover states, and interactions that help direct you through the layers of what can be a somewhat complex design.

Western National Parks Association uses a background image, middle images with animations, and multiple text layers (some on the pictures and some on the background). There’s also scroll animation to help build the design. A lot is going on, but it does not feel too busy.

WIP Architects is another design with layers that interact with each other and include motion. With a lot of scroll animation and layers that go in front of and behind other elements, engagement helps this site work.

The Shipwreck Survey uses the same basic layer outline with a little more overlap between elements and less overall animation. The primary animated effect on the homepage is the scroll bar.

 

 

2. Directed Click Actions

This interesting website design trend can be incredibly useful or a wasted element – directed click actions. These are buttons, icons, and animations that tell you to click somewhere in the design to move to the next stage of interaction.

The direct approach ensures that users see and have the best possible chance of doing what the design is intended for. On the other hand, if you need this much instruction, is the design too complicated? Or is there a middle ground where this trend looks great and is usable?

In each of the examples below, these directed click actions are a bit different.

HUG Co has a big circle to click in the bottom third of the screen. It’s almost designed like a bullseye, and you can’t miss it. The thing that is interesting here is that most of the video falls below the scroll. The click action also has two emojis to denote action – a smiling face or pointer when you are ready to click. (The click extends the video to full screen.)

ThinkOvery also uses a similar circular click icon. It also takes you to the next screen in a single movement so that you can continue to explore the design.

Living with OCD has a different approach with scroll and back-to-top icons paired in the bottom right corner. The scroll option includes words to help create direction and instruction. It consists of a small animation and an interactive hover state when you get close to the interactive element. The interesting thing here is that it is not actually a button, and you use a traditional scroll to interact.

 

 

3. Word Breaks

If you are a stickler for readability, this design trend might make you cringe.

In each of these designs, words are broken across lines – some with and some without hyphens. For the most part, there’s not much confusion about what the words are, but it does make you pause and think during the page experience.

Why would this be a design trend?

It’s a combination of using large typography, long words, and figuring out a solution to create a common experience between large and small screens. Many of these words would not fit on mobile screens, for example, with the same weight, scale, and impact as the desktop counterparts.

Hence, the word break solution. It creates a consistent user experience across devices.

This technique should be used only if you think your audience is savvy enough to understand what you are trying to communicate with the word break. It can be a tricky proposition!

Plantarium breaks at “plant” with a word that’s made up. But with the imagery and supporting terms, you still know immediately what the design is about.

Michelle Beatty takes a common word and breaks it. Because “photog” and “rapher” are the only letters on the screen, it’s pretty easy to figure out. What’s interesting is that the word break is not on the syllable, but the letters do stack nicely with this break visually.

Wreel Collective breaks a word with a hyphen in giant letters – something we rarely see in website design. Hyphens are not often used in this medium. Because of this, it gets your attention and makes you think about the words and the design.

 

 

Conclusion

There are a lot of rule-breaking trends in this month’s collection. They are interesting, fun, and require a certain level of risk to execute.

Could you see yourself (or your clients) opting for a design that features one of these trends? Time will tell if these visual compositions grow in popularity or begin to fade fast.

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Overcoming Blank Page Paralysis

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Whether you’re new to the job or are an experienced designer, the anxiety of a new project can sometimes – often unexpectedly – cause us to freeze in our tracks. This creative paralysis sees us staring at a blank page, unable to come up with ideas, and the knowledge that time is slowly ticking away.

We’ve all been there. So we thought it would be helpful to share our tips and tricks for overcoming the tyranny of the blank page and help you get back to doing great work.

The first thing to know is that you are not alone; blank page syndrome has a basis in science, with a clearly identifiable set of symptoms that consistently occur together. 

The first thing to know is that you are not alone; blank page syndrome has a basis in science

It starts when you become stressed. Stress causes your brain to produce hormones that slow down neural functions, which only serves to increase the feelings of inadequacy over a lack of creative spark – and fuel anxiety. Understandably, this causes a spiral as your mind seems to get emptier and the blank page more threatening.

But don’t fear! Because there are ways to move past blank page paralysis and get back to productivity. 

Just Relax

Once you’re in a negative spiral, it’s notoriously difficult to get out of. The best solution is to avoid the spiral entirely – by starting in the right frame of mind. This means setting up a calm work environment before you even sit down. 

Do your best to avoid major distractions – such as young children who need your attention or colleagues who like to play music that vexes your soul. We’re not saying that you need a sound-proofed home office – the kitchen table might be fine – but schedule your work time for when the kids are at school or with a minder, or work from home if the office is likely to be noisy. A pair of noise-canceling headphones can be handy, too.

Avoid Distractions

Seemingly small things can also get in the way of your work. Chat and email notifications are the digital equivalents of a person calling your name from across a room. Try to avoid or silence anything that stops you getting into the creative mindset, even if you just mute things for a few hours. It’ll help you mentally separate your creative workspace from everything else.

all of those notifications will still be there when you resurface

Ultimately, you need to create a mood that you subconsciously associate with being productive. But even when the space around you is perfect, it can still take a while to get into the zone. Brains don’t just flip into creativity at the flick of a switch, so be kind to yourself. And remember – all of those notifications will still be there when you resurface later in the day. 

Do a Warm-Up

Studies have shown that a blank page is particularly stressful because it makes the task in front of you feel bigger than it really is. Gazing at an empty page is like seeing the whole project stretching out before you. The stress comes from the feeling of having to fill the whole journey, all the way from A to Z.

So don’t start with A! Instead, begin with a warm-up. Just as dancers always start with a series of exercises to warm up their muscles, creative designers can benefit from something similar. You could start by talking things through with colleagues or sketch some ideas using pen and paper, before opening your design app. 

Alternatively, you could start by planning your content hierarchy. You don’t need all the final words – but it can be helpful to work out how many headings you’re going to have, where images will sit, and whether your copy will be in paragraphs or lists. 

By doing this, you’ll have elements to place and a rough idea of their relative importance. It’s easy to get overawed by the importance of actual content – so start by getting a grip on the type, density, and length of content. 

Take Inspiration

The world around us is filled with inspiration and according to an icon designer Yannick Lung:

It helps to observe things in the real world and play around with them.

It can also help to borrow an idea. Obviously, we never condone copying someone’s work, but using existing work as a reference or jumping-off-point can help. Think of it as putting your own twist on an existing idea.

“I sometimes find it useful to reverse engineer a good example of the sort of thing I’m trying to write (and this works for design too). I usually break down a successful example into its constituent parts and swap them out for things more relevant to the project at hand, then refine from there,” says Harvey, one of Sketch’s brand storytellers.

Let Templates Take the Strain

Instead of putting pressure on yourself to instantly start designing, begin by creating templates or wireframes. This isn’t an avoidance tactic. Spending time creating an outline template saves time in the long run – plus, doing practical work that doesn’t need lots of detail will act as a warm-up. It might even help you catch potential issues in your designs earlier. 

Be Collaborative and Welcome Early Feedback

In general, people don’t work well in isolation – so collaborating with colleagues is a great way to get design ideas flowing. At the start of a project, reach out to your colleagues to let them know what you’re going to be working on and set up a session to collaborate on ideas and ask for direct input.

Never wait until the end of a project to ask for feedback. Involving your colleagues in the process early helps counter blank page paralysis and involving stakeholders can help you manage expectations. Aim to get regular and consistent feedback rather than waiting for it – which could cause a delay in your project. 

And of course, you should always choose a design software that enables real-time collaboration so that everyone working on a project can avoid version conflicts.

Avoid Burnout

When work isn’t physical, it can be hard to judge how much it takes out of us

When work isn’t physical, it can be hard to judge how much it takes out of us. If you’re suffering from blank page paralysis, it’s probably a sign that you’re starting to get burnt out. Try setting an alarm on the other side of the room so you have to get up to turn it off regularly – or just scheduling some time into your day to take a break, stretch, or even take a walk. Stepping away from your screen is good for your brain and your body.

In the end, the most important thing to remember when it comes to blank page syndrome is that you have to be kind to yourself. Nobody can be productive 100% of the time – we’re only human, after all. What matters is that you do whatever you need to get your creativity flowing.

 

Featured image via Pexels.

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20 Best New Websites, January 2022

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So here we are, in a brand spanking new year—time for looking forward with fresh ideas and renewed hope for the year ahead. We are kicking off 2022 with a mixed bag and, we hope, something for everyone.

Whether you’re looking for inspiration to update your site or a fresh approach to work for a new client or want to spend a little while browsing around some corners of the internet you might not usually, welcome to the first collection of the year. Enjoy!

Justice Reskill 

Justice Reskill offers a learning platform and support for people who have been through the justice system. Information is presented clearly in a positive, uplifting tone, emphasized by a bright color scheme and friendly type.

TBD Post 

TBD Post’s site is fuss-free, clean, and pleasant to navigate. Work is well presented, in an organized way, with just the right amount of supplementary information.

Speedy 

Speedy is an online business bank, and this is a pretty standard, slick fin-tech site for the most part. The added extra is that the five versions of the site–with the same content in each–have different color accents based on the flag of the specific country listed.

Nuka 

This site for Nuka eternal stationery is a beautifully simple single page. The use of handwritten type in places adds an intimacy while emphasizing the nature of the products.

Omono 

This site for online business management app Omono presents a lot of information clearly, and with a calmness projected by the use of blues and greys and subtle animation.

Pienso 

A combination of bold type, a slightly tweaked red, green, and blue color scheme, and on-scroll animations makes this site for Pienso pop.

Maison Margiela 

Maison Margiela fully embraces the digital alternative to a live catwalk with this blend of single video and edited clips.

Marie O’Shepherd 

This portfolio site for book designer and art director Marie O’Shepherd takes a minimal approach and allows the work to take center stage.

Angry Ventures

Angry Ventures add personality and humor to their site to draw the user in and entertain, while their actual portfolio is only available on request.

Chapter One 

Chapter One’s site has light and dark theme options and some engaging animated graphics.

Vesti il Futuro 

Vesti il Futuro for Mani Tese uses comic book-style interactive graphics to raise awareness of issues surrounding the environment and fast fashion.

Gazelle No.1 

Some scroll-activated video enlivens this single-page site for Gazelle’s No.1 model.

TROA 

This site for creative agency Troa is an excellent example of the effectiveness of a monochrome color scheme, and there are some pleasing transitions too.

BDCC 

BDCC’s site has a bold, slightly jumbled feel that works really well. The falling lozenge menu items are a nice feature.

Mekanism

This is a great example of a stylish website for an agency portraying itself as well-established and super polished.

Redbrick 

Redbrick’s site has a youthful, vibrant feel with colors that change to match the product branding.

Accounting Box 

This site for Accounting Box makes good use of split-screen swapping from a vertical split on desktop to a horizontal split on mobile. The animations are pleasing too.

François-Joseph Graf 

The design for François-Joseph Graf’s site does the right thing by getting out of the way to avoid competing with the rather stunning products on show.

Monsta Cats 

Monsta Cats is a site dedicated to community focussed NFTs. The site is suitably anarchic and fun to browse.

Bien Fondé 

And finally, some customizable good wishes for the year ahead from digital agency Bien Fondé.

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3 Essential Design Trends, December 2021

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The year might be coming to an end, but plenty of design trends are still beginning to emerge. It’ll be interesting to see how many of these website design elements remain popular into the new year. From vintage elements to circles to happier feelings, there’s a lot to play with here.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month…

Old-School Print Inspired

Vintage design elements seem to circle back in new iterations at a pretty frequent pace. This time website designers are finding inspiration from old-school print design.

These projects mimic the look of old newspapers and magazines with styles that look like news or advertising content. One of the most exciting takeaways might be color, with beige backgrounds that almost seem like aged paper.

Note the font choices, scale, and imagery as well. All of these things have an old-school feel that’s modern enough to help encourage interaction.

Each of these designs keeps visitors engaged with trendy effects that pair with the vintage aesthetic so that while there’s an old-school look, the overall design is modern and fresh.

The portfolio of Niccolo Miranda feels like a “WAR” day on the front page of a major newspaper, but with modern touches – computer illustrations, animated images, and button-style icons.

Enfant Sauvage Music takes on the feel of an old-style newspaper or magazine ad with a single color design and grainy imagery. An oversized funky pointer on hover and side navigation keeps the design interesting.

Kalso uses a giant timeline with typography and effects that mimic the era on the screen. Animation and motion keep the design with the times and on-trend.

Center-Screen Circles

Circles seem to be a website design trend that just never goes out of style – it only evolves.

The newest iteration includes center-screen circles. And you can use them in all kinds of different ways. The nice thing about a circle is the shape is innately harmonious and can pull a design together and make everything feel together and unified.

They can be an excellent container for text or other elements or serve as a button.

Circles work with almost any overall design pattern, in any color, and with virtually any type of image or video. The shape is practically perfect! (That’s why it’s a trend that never really gets old.)

Each of these examples uses a center-screen circle in a slightly different way.

Aflote uses a center circle as part of its overall branding effort and to help draw the eye from the split-screen images to the center arrow, encouraging users to scroll to the next bit of content. Color helps here, and the circle is a container for brand and some other content with a nice layer on top of the images.

One Ocean Science uses one of the oldest circles we know – the globe – as a dominant art element that rotates in the center of the screen. The layer on top – the exact text in multiple languages – gets extra attention thanks to the center placement. The design also uses a top left corner circle for branding and a bottom right corner circle as a CTA, helping create a visual flow through the design from top to center to bottom to click.

To Be Love uses a fantastic animated set of concentric circles to pull together the name of the event and draw interest to the CTAs. The circle is just the right size in a sea of black sky to draw the eye to the content in the middle of the screen.

Lighter, Happier Designs

After a couple of years of pandemic life and a world that’s just been a little less than cheery, website designers include lighter, happier elements to projects. This might just be the design trend we all need right now.

This effect can be designed in several ways, including color, imagery, animation, scale, and even typography. It’s hard to pinpoint what makes a design lighter and happier until you see it, but when you do, you’ll know it. (It might just be that little grin at the corner of your mouth when you see it.)

Meanpug uses fun, animated illustrations as a load screen with a full-text homepage (you’ll have to click through to see it). Between color and animation, you can’t help but feel good looking at the design. What might be most interesting is that the website is for a marketing agency that works with law firms. (Probably not what you expected at all.)

Happy smiling faces are hard not to feel good about. Even the devil emoji seems somewhat joyful. Add in big, bold typography and the yellow smiley, and the world just feels a little less dark.

Oatly uses lots of small elements in a cartoon-style aesthetic that is light and interesting. In addition to fun fonts and animation, all of the words on the website also contribute to a feeling of ease and happiness. It’s a solid strategy for sales; make people feel good about what they are thinking of buying to help propel them toward a purchase.

 

Conclusion

One of the most exciting things that we’ve seen with design trends in the past year is how world events – from the pandemic to isolation to working remotely – have impacted design projects as a whole.

We’ve seen fewer faces, more illustrations and typography, and an overall shift in feeling to some of the lighter, happier design elements featured here. Cheers to 2022!

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