Every week at Fueled, our London-based Creative Director, Rob Palmer, shares a handful of inspirational websites with our teams in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. This weekly email acts as a virtual water cooler, encouraging us to congregate across time zones and discuss what brands and blogs are doing to push new trends in web design.

Al Erkyah City

The Al Erkyah City website is simple and clean in its web design and there are a number of features that add to the site. The homepage is shaded in matte colors like black, white, and beige, which makes the bright green italicized font really stand out. There is a bold cut out logo at the center of the page, allowing it to act as a window that the viewer is able to peek through. Everything appears above the fold, and when scrolling up with your mouse, a new photograph appears behind the logo to make it seem as though a slide show is taking place. Further into the website, page transitions are unique and interesting: a diagonal line cut across the screen shifts from top to bottom, giving the overall experience a geometric feel.

Al Erkyah City

Henge

Built with exquisite web design, Henge is the ultimate website for all types of luxury furniture pieces. Movements and transitions are linear, and details all the way down to the hamburger menu add to the elegance and opulence of the site. Above the fold on the homepage, a delicate line is drawn at the center that appears and disappears, inviting you to scroll farther down on the page. The line acts as a spine to support all of the following photographs and text, and the parallax effect adds dimension to the site. Each photograph slightly fades when hovering your mouse over it and the Discover button lights up to draw in your attention. The menu page is also unique and exciting: when hovering over each page option, the font turns a deep bold red, and red scattered lines appear in the background. The moving lines make you want to click on them - or follow them - and though nothing will happen, the page gives the feeling of being an abstract painting.

Henge

Renate Rechner

The Renate Rechner website is exceptional and outstanding in its web design. On the homepage of the site, the logo sits at the center of the page in a clever design of two R-letters that are reverse mirror images of each other. The entire website is built around this image; transitions move in a rotating manner, pages are split into two colors, and the left half is rightside up, while the right half is upside down. When swiping up, the page rotates clockwise, and swiping down it rotates counter clockwise. Each letter of the text that appears on the page slides from bottom to top, reminiscent of bubbles, or tiny balloons that are floating to the top of the screen. This clever feature not only gives the page dimension, but it gives the site an overall feeling of being light, weightless, and bouncy.

Renate Rechner

David Hellmann

As an ode to David Hellmann, a digital art director and designer, this website is simple and minimalist in design and structure. Most of the site is black and white, giving it an easy and straightforward feel with small elements colored in a beige, gold hue. Farther down on the page, when hovering over the different project names, a slender line appears below the content and the font lights up in gold. In this way, the words come to life and involve the viewer with an interactive experience. In order to decipher between different sections, there is a faint zigzag line that appears and gives the page a modern feel. Between page transitions, a circle appears at the center of the screen that acts as a buffering icon, providing a nice contrast between the linear design on the rest of the website.

David Hellmann

Retro Minder

For all of the 80s kids out there, Retro Minder is an awesome throwback with the ultimate interactive experience. The entire site is built around a name game: images of actors will appear and you are to identify them, either by typing in their character’s name from the movie or their real life name. If you can’t wrack your brain for the right match, you can always press the enter key to skip, but your score at the end will suffer. The overall design of the site is meant to take you back in time with glitchy transitions and static TV reception - and, of course, catchy 70s, 80s, and 90s music playing in the background. The backdrop of each page is faded black-grey to resemble a grainy old school television, and much of the font is colored in neon blues, yellows, and pinks. Overall, this site is exciting and undoubtedly authentic in its outstanding web design: a true blast from the past.

Retro Minder