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Article in Under the Hood category.
Our Top Sites for Design Inspiration: Issue 44
From vast stretches of cornfields to the vast emptiness of space, this week's design covers ground and space in a unique perspective. Check it out!
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.
The Void
Explore the mysteries of the cosmos and indulge in your fascination of space without leaving your seat. The Void website certainly lives up to its name by puncturing your doubts while swelling your imagination. Unlike other sites that incorporate a black background either for the sake of aesthetics or by default, Void’s pitch black reflects the abyss of deep space. Its homepage is a marvel design that leaves you at the edge of a rotating black hole animation. The realism of the particles that travel around the black hole is simply jaw-dropping. As you proceed further in the domain, you actually enter the gravitating behemoth! Where you end up next is only a click away.
Cybeer Bar
Cheers! No and yes. No, you don’t get a feed of the longtime NBC comedy through this webpage. Yes, it is 2D reminiscent of the typical bar setup. Cybeer Bar is a website that not only allows you to customize your own beer but features a merry flat design which encourages socializing and just having a good time. Though you might not have a drinking buddy by your side, by the time you’re finished customizing your beer, you’ll wish there was someone next to you to clank beers with. Ditch the bar and try out this site. It’s less crowded and more modest.
Cameo
The first thing that hits you in the face when you first enter this website is the breathtaking scenery of a man standing at the edge of a cliff in a valley with the sun brightening the horizon. If you thought that was all there was to it, you’re wrong. Start scrolling down and you’ll discover that what once took up the entire page is nothing more than one of several photos associated with a smartphone. In that sense this site performs well in accordance with Cameo and Vimeo’s reputation. If you enjoy a web base that projects the potential of mobile on one site, edit and share through Cameo.
Webshop
Wiseass comments are everywhere. You read them on the internet. They’re written on the shirts I wear. Now you see them pill bottles and pouch labels. Having a rather plain white background and no animation, Webshop’s domain distinguishes itself from other sites that hoist crude jokes by tagging our daily concerns and twisting them into smothered humor, then slapping them on a label. As stated above, the “pills” are nothing but peppermint and the resulting bursts of elation and confidence are the Placebo Effect at work. Oh yea, all proceeds go towards HIV. You don’t have to be gay or a jester to spend your time reading the jokes off this site but rather just someone who just wants to go off on a tangent for a change.
Go For Sunweb Yellow
For those who are excited by drag n’ drop games, this website might irk your curiosity. But here we’re not dragging items of a certain genre into a box and eliciting a wisecrack for answering correctly. This site allows you to move along a chain that runs across the page by clicking on the left or right arrows. Hanging from this chain are the faces of the usual suspects - a laundry list of cyclists. Since they all bike for a living, why not just match the face with one standard cyclist outfit? Anyway, you can learn the name of the individual cyclist when you drag his face into the spotlight. This not only a place where you can book cycling/skiing resorts but if you’re interested, can serve as an educational briefing about a whole ‘nother world.
Karim Rashid
This entire website is dedicated to one man. “Karim Rashid” is all over the place, from the headline in bold black to his signature in pink. Hell, even the URL bears his name. So what’s so special about him? What’s so unique about this site? If you are willingly to brush aside all the megalomania and explore the domain, you’ll find that this man is actually quite talented. From the landing page you can scroll either down move across the page. Moving down, you’ll find vast columns of images detailing Rashid’s projects. Shifting to your right, you’ll see full pages for his projects instead of small frames. This site is for those who are tolerant enough to see past all the bluff and compensation for a man’s shortcomings and into the beauty of his art.
Creative Cruise
Creative Cruise is a website that promotes a tour of Amsterdam through it famous canal by boat. Its ingenious design has a boat anchored on a blue strip that runs across the page. As you move your mouse left or right, the scenery of buildings above and below that blue strip of water change, making you feel like you’re traveling along the city while the boat remains rooted in the center of the screen. This effectively simulates a 2D trip through a cityscape without the hassle of importing 3D elements. A true stroke of genius through sheer simplicity, it makes me want to take a boat ride already.
Tomorrowland
Tomorrowland’s website blends the awe of open field, open skies beauty with a stunning futuristic citadel in a 360 degree environment. If you’re one that’s always longed for the peacetime nostalgia that an endless sea of wheat below clear blue skies brings, just keep looking in one direction and pretend there’s no advanced aircraft flying over once in a while. One the other hand, if you envision a utopian future where human and machine coexist flawlessly, turn 180 degrees and you’ll immediately bond with your calling. This domain is for those who cherish purity and/or just want a moment of serenity. I recommend that everyone, especially those bogged down by hectic city life, to spend a few minutes exploring this pristine site.
