Web design is one of the most important aspects of any business utilizing the web. Your website serves as a digital storefront for your product, service, or portfolio. Superb web designs are created each and every day.
Finding truly exceptional examples of effective web design takes hours of combing through the right channels. Thankfully we’ve combed through those channels for you.
Here are 4 examples of effective web design:
1. Flow by Ben Schade
When it comes to web design, less is more. Overloading the user with text, images, and widgets can be tempting when you have poured hours into creating custom designs, icons, and other elements for your webpage. Restraint is more effective. Succumbing to design gluttony will make your website hard to navigate, difficult to understand, and easy to forget.
Ben Schade’s design is a wonderful example of restraint. A black-and-white photo shows up faintly, overlaying a stark white background. The agency’s name, flow, is the only item with color. The cursive letters appear in a super-large font.
The main menu is seen on the left. The menu is unobtrusive, there’s barely an indication of its existence save for the blue oval highlighting the contact navigation element.
2. Get Coupled by Tubik
Sometimes everything you want can be accomplished with color. While it may seem like there’s a lot going on in the design above, it’s actually deceptively simple — and equally appealing. A purple background is contrasted with a mint, almost neon green. These colors can easily clash, but the bright, neon variants pop quite nicely. The retro illustrations are modernized and the throwback color scheme is reinvented in this context.
The navigation is incredibly simple. The design leads your eye to two buttons. The complexity of navigating the website is stripped. The user experience is optimized without sacrificing style. Form and function work perfectly together in this clean and colorful web design mockup.
3. Star Citizen fan design by Hoang Nguyen
Experienced web designers know how to leverage any and all elements to make for the best visual experience. In this design, the background image does most of the work. The designer was wise enough to get out of the way of the beautiful background image.
The webpage is composed of clean rectangular shapes; the web page is divided into distinct fourths below the hero image. The site maintains a monochromatic color scheme with bold, crisp white lettering. The result is an easy-to-navigate web page that comes across as stunningly beautiful.
4. Human Interface Design by Ben Schade
Harkening back to an older medium can help bring innovative designs into newer ones. In this design, the web application looks more like an art booklet than it does a traditional web page. Again, the designer utilizes a minimalist design to arrive at the maximal effect.
Only a few colors are used, the navigation menu is turned to its side, resembling a binding of a book. The social media footer is grey and small, tucked out of site. The white and grey background is unobtrusive.
Text along the borders is easily distinguishable but does not draw the eye. Our full attention is brought to the oblong section dominating the space. It’s pleasing and feels original without feeling confusing.
Conclusion
What separates the wheat from the chaff? Pretty designs are easy to come by, but user optimized experiences are few and far between.
The look of a website is easy enough, but the feeling is very hard for new designers to get just right. You need both elements, an amazing look, and feel, to qualify for exceptional design.
Looking for exceptional web design can help you hone your eye, inspire ideas, and lead to collaborating with well-respected designers.
Indeed, optimizing your web design is a great way to bring in traffic. Creating amazing web designs can be an incredibly enriching endeavor as well. Although mastering web design may feel like it’s far away, it just takes a bit of research and a lot of practice.
Follow design trends, keep up-to-date on the latest tools of the trade, and keep studying superb examples of web design to help you on your journey. If you keep at it, you’re sure to find even more stunning examples of incredible design — and may even create some unique creations of your own.
