5 Awesome Designs: Websites

As well as working away at my own design work, I often take time to check out interesting design work from a broad range of sectors, so I’ve decided to start up a blog series focusing on some great design work I’ve come across. Each post aims to show off five of my favourite designs, focusing each time on a different medium, for example logos or posters. This post I’ve decided to take a look at awesome website designs.
 
As there are so many creative companies and individuals out there with brilliant websites, I’ve tried to limit my choices to companies who do not work in the creative industries, focusing instead on industries you would not typically expect such visually engaging websites from. The aim is not to rank these as being the best out there, but simply to provide some inspiration you may not have seen before.

Ingram Cole & Land

Accountants
Created by Craft Store Creative
Paperwork, numbers, offices… These are all things we commonly associate with accounting. The guys over at Ingram Cole and Land clearly want you to forget about that and let them take care of it for you. Their bright and colourful website is more than enough to make you stop in your tracks and no doubt reflects the ethos of the company. As well as the heavy use of imagery, I also love the animated abacus loading screen, acting as a subtle nod towards their profession. Overall though, it’s the bright Pink and blue colour palette which really breaks the status quo for accountants.

Seattle Cider Company

Cidery
Created by DEI Creative
The Seattle cider company’s website is a stylish statement with a fresh and natural feel. They’ve managed to find a good contrast between the serenity of the brand’s natural colours (also seen on their product packaging) and the sharp, clean feel that flat design carries off so nicely. The script font really complements the website’s look and feel as well. But what really sets this website apart is the simple yet brilliant scrolling animation used to illustrate the cider making process step by step. It really goes to show the passion the company must have for what they do.

FiberSensing

Fibre optic technology
Created by Burocratik
As far as first impressions go, this has it all. The desktop experience is best for this website, starting with the giant animated light pattern, which responds to the position of the cursor. Scrolling down past this reveals a site which is just as visually appealing, with brilliant imagery and iconography. But the fullscreen imagery and animations don’t just stop after the main page, but can even be found on all other pages. Take a look at one of the case study pages http://www.fibersensing.com/cases/siemens and just take a look at all the individual scrolling effects and animated items. It’s clear that this is a company who takes pride in their online presence.

ETQ

Retail
Now, I know there are a lot of nice retail websites out there, but this one really caught my eye. ETQ have ditched many of the conventions of retail websites, ditching filters, making names less obvious and providing consistent images of all the products. The site is unbelievably minimal, stripping away all of the unnecessary mess and leaving the focus almost entirely on the products. This, paired with high quality imagery of the products and the subtle movement animations found throughout the website, all add up to a visually sleek website.

Diehl Group Architects

Architecture
As a firm specialising in forensic architecture amongst other things, the team at Diehl Group Architects clearly decided that they should put just as much thought into construction of their website. The result is a dark website with a solid and robust look and feel. The subtle use of red mixed in with the dominantly black and grey website really works to highlight features. The real magic happens when you explore the website a little though. With interactive maps, downloadable CV’s of each team member, and pop-up explanations of their core services. All packed in with a parallax background effect so subtle you don’t even think about it.