26 Creative Approaches to Header Design

GrandmasterB — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:00:10 +0000

Following in the footsteps of my recent 26 Creative Approaches to Footer Design post; I thought that it would be cool to post twenty-six creative header designs. Creative header designs are quickly becoming a growing trend in website design. The header is still the default area for placing logos and navigation, but the manner in which they are being placed is a different technique altogether. Some of the sites that I found included all types of different design elements, information and one even included an audio player.

The thing that sets all of these designs apart from most, is that they all use a great deal of CSS to pull off the multiple layers of images. Take Pixel Criminals for example (#16 on the list), the header alone consists of four or five different images layered together and the main image is over 500K…that’s insane! Many of the designs included in the list of twenty-six creative header designs have a desktop theme, giving the feeling of the site being a workspace. They are really unique designs and feature items like sticky notes for navigation, paper clips, coffee mugs and other workspace essentials. One of the designs has implemented Flash to simulate a steamy cup of Java…BRILLIANT!

If you’re a website designer like myself, or just a fan of creative website design; I’m sure you’ll enjoy my list of creative header designs…ENJOY!

26 Creative Approaches to Header Design

Koko Digital

Revolution Driving Tuition

The Circumfrence

Star Catcher

Kreativa Unlimited

Gary Nock

Klei Entertainment

The Dollar Dreadful

Parallax Denigrate

26 Creative Approaches to Footer Design

GrandmasterB — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:00:24 +0000

In my day-to-day routine, I spend a great deal of time looking for and searching out new trends in Web Design. Lately, I have noticed on trend that is “Swiffering” the Internet…creatively designed footers. Over the past year or so, it has become apparent that the footer of a website is no longer an afterthought or a throw away item. If you follow conventional design principals, you put everything that is deemed ‘unimportant’ at the bottom of the page. If you look at most websites, you’ll notice that many of them have extremely boring footer designs. Most of them you can’t even call “designs”; they’re just static information that they needed to put somewhere…look at my footer. Guilty as charged!

So why buck the system and spice up your footer design? Well, many designer are looking to the footer of the website as valuable real estate to put information that’s not quite top content, but definitely “important”. I have noticed that this trend of creative footer design is especially prominent in the blogging community. With all of the tools available to bloggers from social networking and bookmarking you often struggle to find places to make everything fit and make it look good. Many bloggers are using the footer to place elements like their Twitter updates, FLIKR photos, blog archives, recent comments, latest posts and other elements that are generally left for the sidebar.

I’ve been working on a project for a client that will incorporate a more creative footer design, and eventually when I have time to design version two of GrandmasterB.com; I will be concentrating a lot more time on a creative footer design for the site. I have compiled a list of 26 website designs with stunning and creative footer designs to show you what you can do with your footer. In looking at these sites and their designs, they bring a sense of completion to the site. The entire layout ties the design together and makes for a creative and killer site design. Each of these designs have a unique and creative approach to utilizing the footer as a place to showcase a number of items. Check them out, comment and let me know what you think.