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So Retro: 15 Vintage Style Inspired Website Designs

SA Rogers — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 17:00:09 +0000

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Graphics & Branding. ]

You might think web designers would strive for the most cutting-edge, up-to-the-moment look possible considering the 21st-century nature of the medium. But websites don’t all have to be sleek and modern – sometimes, a theme featuring old-fashioned signs, retro typography and photographs, vintage products and illustrations straight off World War II propaganda posters can be surprisingly fresh. These 15 websites take us back to another age in a manner that’s appropriate for each site’s subject matter.

Hipstery

A concept that’s a bit zany needs a zany website, and Hipstery certainly has that with its psychedelic Leave it to Beaver vibe. The site allows users to take a quiz about their likes and dislikes and then receive a mystery t-shirt in the mail.

Dollar Dreadful

With an engraved-style header image including two portraits of the site’s founders, Dollar Dreadful could easily be a newspaper from 1882 – down to the row of old-fashioned ads for things like “Muccatypo, fine letter forms & moustache twirling.” Hawking short stories “for the distinguished reader or the particularly wealthy dunder-head”, Dollar Dreadful gets a lot less antique-looking once you click on the storefront.

MediaBOOM

MediaBOOM isn’t trying to convince anyone that they provide “modern design for a modern word”, or any such nonsense. But they do use cutting-edge technology to provide interactive websites for clients like Jim Beam and Yale University. The layered, scrapbook-style design of their own site even comes with a vintage radio soundtrack.

The New York Moon

The way that The New York Moon’s “radio feed” is delivered to its website is anything but vintage: it’s a direct stream from Twitter. But that doesn’t mean they can’t cleave to the same aesthetics that they have loved since they first began transmission a century ago. And, somehow, it works. As they say themselves: “the internet is the dream of ham radio fulfilled. It’s a place for individuals to connect and broadcast with little obstruction.”

Small Stone Recordings

Like those who yearn for the days when families gathered around radios, many musicians aren’t thrilled about the transition from analog to digital and how it has affected sound. Perhaps that sentiment is behind the rock n’ roll throwback look of the Small Stones Recordings website.

Style 4U

Pairing vintage-looking photos and details like gloves, old television sets and film strip image borders with a fresh color scheme, Italian site Style 4U marries an aged aesthetic with the latest in fashion.

CSS Tinderbox

With a look that’s more Soviet propaganda than 21st century web template source, CSS Tinderbox certainly stands out from all the other websites offering similar products, though their “frameworks for the web design proletariat” are more run-of-the-mill.

Island Photobooth

Photo booths were all the rage back in the ’60s, but they’ve gotten big updates for modern times – like digital touch screens and personalized custom graphics. Island Photobooth, a Vancouver company that rents out photo booths for events, illustrates their tagline “vintage style meets digital technology”.

Target Scope

How do you get command of your brand? Hire some WWII-era troops, apparently. Dallas advertising agency Target Scope has an engaging military-themed interactive website that features plane shadows flying by on occasion, bullet holes and, yes, a scope that you use to browse the top navigation bar.

Custom Design

The buzzing, pixelated static of an analog television isn’t the only thing on the Custom Design website that will take you back in time. Check out the script font, the vintage furniture, and even the rolodex on the table which stands in for a “contact” button.

Font Diner

What are you craving – a chicken basket? A milkshake? Perhaps something from the country store, or the diner’s secret recipe? Font Diner has it all, packed with all-you-can-eat retro fonts on a very dineriffic website.

Charlies Loan

Most loan websites are all business, seeking to look as professional as possible. The British Check Cashers Association decided to do something a little different with the ‘Charlies Loan’ website, which oddly – or not – prominently features a photo of Charlie Chaplin on the home page.

Ernest Hemingway Collection

If Ernest Hemingway were around today, would he have anything to do with websites? Fans and scholars could debate that question, but in any case, the late author’s website pays fitting tribute to a man from another time. The site is designed to look like a desktop scattered with change, photos, a passport and a cup of coffee.

Level 2D

Interactive and scenic, the Level 2D website has the look of a vintage full-service garage complete with a flickering sign and garage bays for web design and hosting.

Visit Cascadia

Truck drivers get to see a lot of American landscapes, including those that have remained relatively unchanged over the decades. But imagine if they had an idyllic all-American town of their very own, with attractions like a truck-only drive-thru, the World’s Largest Cupholder and a beef jerky tasting room. The ‘Visit Cascadia’ website brings this imaginary town to life with nostalgic imagery.

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Graphics & Branding. ]

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Naturally Tactile Tech: 15 Beautifully Textured Websites

SA Rogers — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:00:02 +0000

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Graphics & Branding. ]

When the world wide web first came into popular use in the ’90s, it wasn’t pretty. Cold, visually uninteresting and – well – ugly, websites put functionality far before form and were anything but inviting. So for everyone who loves to run their hands along a pleasing texture, from fine linen canvas to a big soft sweater, textured images in modern web design are a warm and comforting reminder of the three-dimensional, sensual real world.

Big Sweater Design

Vincent Maglione’s last name translates roughly from Italian as “big sweater”. So not only did Maglione name his web design company “Big Sweater Design”, he tied the reference in to his portfolio website in the most memorable way possible, using a knit sweater texture for the background.

Real Visuals

For a company that calls itself “Real Visuals”, this architectural rendering, 3D interior design and 3D architecture firm certainly illustrates the concept well on its own website with a realistic wood plank background as well as fabric, paper and other textured images.

Rock Point

Outdoor equipment company Rock Point outfitted its website with a highly appropriate – both for its name and its business – rough rock textured background. The background serves as a nicely contrasting backdrop for all the slick modern merchandise, pulling in a reference to the great outdoors.

Przeznaczenie.eu

With blood spatters on cracked dirty pavement, this website is nothing if not gritty, perfectly suited for an interactive “serial mystery-crime” game.

Made to Kill

Not all web background textures have to be literal and attention-grabbing. The subtlety of the chalky black paper on the website for Made to Kill, a web design firm, keeps the focus on the company’s portfolio.

The Brown Corporation

What else would you expect from ‘The Brown Corporation‘, a company that makes lightweight portable cardboard toilets with a fecal mascot named ‘Jack’, but a brown cardboard background on their website? Hey, it works.

Texture Lovers

Something tells us the folks at ‘Texture Lovers‘ love texture. Just a hunch. But for all their affection for tactile surfaces, they kept the leathery background of their own website low-key, making sure that the texture samples they produce are the center of attention.

Alpine Meadows

Simple and yet much more visually interesting than a flat color, the plaid fabric background and fraying ribbon nav bar on the Alpine Meadows website are nicely done.

Bern Unlimited

Would the Bern Unlimited website be anywhere near as eye-catching without the torn cardboard header and side bar backgrounds? Clearly scanned from real boxes, this texture is one-of-a-kind.

Carbonica

What does brown kraft paper and linen fabric say to you? Organic, natural, earth-friendly? Perfect, because that’s exactly what Carbonica, a carbon offsetting service, is all about.

The Darling Tree

Another case of supreme subtlety, Susannah Conway’s website has a barely discernible fabric-textured background that plays up the illustrative quality of the graphics.

Bridge 55

A store for urban men should have an urban-looking website. Bridge 55 clothing pulls it off well with a cracking plaster wall, revealing bricks beneath.

Narfstuff

With a combination of watercolor web design, paper textures and even polaroid borders on images, the Narfstuff website is a visual buffet of beautiful textures.

The Organic Supermarket

There’s something about moss that just makes you want to reach out and touch it. Perhaps Ireland’s Organic Supermarket is hoping that this earthy, green background will make you reach right through your screen and pick up a few bags of groceries while you’re at it.

Wall Swaps

Any analog types that bemoan the loss of physicality in the computer age, especially those who love to pin inspiration and ideas on the wall, will love the cork board design of ‘Wall Swaps‘, which basically creates a digital version of a bulletin board.

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Graphics & Branding. ]

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