20 Websites With Unique Layouts

Published January 1st, 2008 in Design

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When you are creating a new website you may be inspired by seeing other sites that feature unique layouts. The 20 sites listed here don’t simply use a typical two or three column layout. Many of them use background images to interact with and control the layout in some unique way. Some of them I really like, and some I’m not sold on, but all are unique in one way or another.

For more design inspiration, see:

Popmatik – Freelance web designer Rob Leach uses a unique layout for his portfolio site. The site uses a background image of a bottle and the content of the site appears to be on the label of the bottle.

Digitalmash.com – Digital Mash is the home of Australian web designer Rob Morris. What makes the layout unique is the background image of Rob holding the content of the page.

Melissahie.com – A portfolio site with a different twist, MelissaHie.com leads the visitor through a series of different sections of one page that include links to websites in a portfolio, a brief bio, and contact information. As you click on links, you will slide to a different section of the page.

Evanescenceuk.co.uk – The British website of American rock band Evanescence uses a horizontal layout and a navigational scheme similar to MelissaHie.com, where the visitor slides across the site when using the navigation rather than being taken to a separate page.

Sitotis.hr - The background image for Sitotis is a binder that contains the content of the page. Tabs in the binder are used for navigation.

Mussatto.com.br – Mussatto uses a long, horizontal layout that doesn’t require vertical scrolling as opposed to the standard, tall layout.

Basil Gloo – Web Developer Basil Gloo uses an interesting layout on his homepage that separates the page into a left and a right side. The left side contains his personal information and the right side his business information.

Danviv.net – The portfolio site of Dan Viveiros uses a unique layout and several images of cassette tapes.

CraigEarl.co.uk – Photographer Craig Earl uses a layout that features four tall and narrow images that link to different categories of photos in his portfolio: everyday, landscapes, bands, and people.

JeremyCowart.com – Another interesting photography portfolio site, JeremyCowart.com places all of the emphasis on the pictures by taking you straight to the photos in the portfolio. Rather than making you click a few links to get to the photos, they are right there, one on top of the other. What’s most unique is that to get to any content other than photos you can visit the contact, news, and project links.

Huge – This design company uses a large image on the left side of the homepage with the primary navigation and content in a narrow column on the right.

Interview Magazine – Another horizontal layout, Interview Magazine presents a different visual impression than other online magazines.

The Horizontal Way – As a gallery of horizontal websites, The Horizontal Way naturally uses a horizontal layout itself.

Swiths.com – This website uses a large background image of a wood floor and a guy’s feet. The content of the site is on a piece of paper and a notepad laying on the floor.

Davor van Eijk – The homepage of Davor van Eijk places navigation in the center of the page on an angle. The content of the page is in the lower right hand corner.

Ribbit.com – This layout features a large background image of a man sitting on the grass. The sky in the picture becomes the background of the page. The picture and how it interacts with the layout is really what give the page a unique feel.

BootB – This site uses a black background and some drawn clouds at the top of the page. The center of the page contains navigation in a circle that is part of an image of a hot air balloon that is about to float to the clouds.

Vesess – Vesess uses a simple header that includes navigation and then goes into an image right at the focal point of the page. If you scroll down you will see the use of a few columns for some basic information. While it is maybe not as different as many of the sites on this list it is still a break from the norm.

Dinulovic.com – The Dinulovic homepage contains no real content. It uses an image at the center of the layout with navigation on both sides.

StoryAbout.net – The homepage of Hansol Huh’s portfolio site uses a large image that says “Life is Random” in dots. Below the image is a link to the portfolio.

144 Responses to “20 Websites With Unique Layouts”

Matthew Griffin January 1st, 2008

Great list, Steven. It’s difficult to break out of those tidy two column CSS layouts sometimes. Thanks for the inspiration.

TyCat January 1st, 2008

this is a nice look at the more creative side of design

Vandelay Design January 1st, 2008

Matthew and TyCat,
Thanks for your feedback. I think it’s nice just to see how some designers are using creativity.

Neena (NeenMachine) January 1st, 2008

These are very creative. With a design like this, I would almost venture to say that content doesn’t matter, the packaging is fantastic!

Simon Ward January 1st, 2008

Wow, some very cool site designs here Steven.

pablopabla January 1st, 2008

Those sites are really beautiful. Are you going to use the ideas for your projects?

By the way, good to see the Digg button. It’s long overdue. And the 125×125 ad space is timely. I’m sure you’ll get some advertisers soon

Carlos Leopoldo January 1st, 2008

Very creative layouts but some of them are unusable

Jermayn Parker January 1st, 2008

There are some really good ideas there, I love the Evanescence layout as well as the Rob Leach, Sitotis and Davor van Eijk designs, very unique.

Thanks for showing us them

Wayne Liew January 1st, 2008

Creative sites like these often own the world when their screenshots are published.

Some creative sites have gone overboard with their creativity, causing the usability of their sites to falter. Also, some creative designs such as using a lot of images or Flash application will throttle the web surfing experience of web users.

Anyway, great compilation of sites which took some of time to navigate within them to experience the cool elements, such as scrolling sideways (don’t let me see this in blogs please) in Evanescence’s site.

Ruchir January 2nd, 2008

Some great research there, Steve. Informative article. It shows how to stand out from the crowd. Of course all those elements won’t really look nice on blogs. Why don’t you do another post, Steven: 20 Blogs with Unique Layouts. I’m sure you’ll find some

Eric D January 2nd, 2008

Do you think we will be seeing more horizontal sites in the future? It almost reminds me of flipping through a magazine rather than a website that changes pages as opposed to “sliding” over to the next topic.

I may have to try to incorporate that in one of my next sites.

Thanks for the look at these great sites………….eric aka NoviceSEO

Eric January 2nd, 2008

I enjoy looking at sites that break away from the norm. They really work well for certain purposes. As a portfolio or gallery, they’re great. However, if you’re looking for a way to display information… simple is good.

In my opinion, a website should showcase its design OR its information. Both is simply too distracting.

pearl January 2nd, 2008

nice collection Steven, but I’d like to hear which designs you ‘really like’

good to see you monetizing a bit and yes that Digg button was so needed on your posts!!

Ahead Directory January 2nd, 2008

awsome! these are really very creative layouts, i must say. keep up the good work.

LGR January 2nd, 2008

I stopped looking at the sites when they started to resize my browser, use flash only and eventually crash my entire browser. Beside the fact that the sites “look cool” what criteria did you use to pick them? Certainly websites that are resizing browsers, using only flash and eventually crashing browsers are not very user friendly.

Dave Walker January 2nd, 2008

I’ve been seeing the trend towards horizontal layouts for a few years now, and I’m finally starting to like how they’re being executed. I’m kind of surprised that it’s taken this long to get them right, but I’m happy to see web media finally becoming independent of its print roots (especially now that widescreen monitors are so prevalent).

Hmm… new New Years Resolution: try building a personal project web site that uses horizontal layout and scrolling.

Alex January 2nd, 2008

Some of these sites do have cool layouts, some I had to figure out exactly how to work them and where the information was going to be displayed. Nonetheless I always like seeing creative designs, thanks for posting

john January 2nd, 2008

Uniqueness does not always a usable web site make.

(and because I’m putting the verb at the end of the sentence, you know it’s true)

Marco Rosella January 2nd, 2008

Many thanks Steven!

Aaron January 2nd, 2008

Wow some of these sites are very inspiring to me.
Thank you for sharing.

Braintrove.com January 2nd, 2008

Great to see such creativity out there!

Keep up the good work!

patternlinks.com January 2nd, 2008

Very interesting designs.

Al. E January 2nd, 2008

this new site findingdulcinea.com (spelling?) did a whole week long feature on “design goes online” – which doesn’t really name specific sites for their design attributes – but talks about some sites to go for inspiration and history of design , online design firms, and the like. A cool indepth look at e-(and other) design.

Melissa Hie January 2nd, 2008

thanks for the mention!

Vandelay Design January 2nd, 2008

To everyone who mentioned that some of these sites aren’t user-friendly, I agree. I think some are and some are not. Even the ones that are not usable I think can still provide some good design inspiration. In a few cases it’s not actually the design that makes them unusable.

Eric D.,
To answer your question, I hope we don’t see more horizontal designs. I find them to be annoying to use, personally. Apparently some people love them, and they are definitely unique.

Eric,
I couldn’t agree more, simple is good when displaying information. A unique design can help you to stand out, but it can also hurt you in other ways.

Pearl,
Ok, here are my favorites in no particular order: Jeremy Cowart, Huge, Digital Mash, and I like the concept of Craig Earle but not the functionality.

LGR,
That’s why I tend to like minimalistic designs, you can avoid most of those problems. However, I didn’t have any of the issues when I was on these sites. Again, this is only meant to be an inspirational gallery, not a collection of great and useful sites. Certainly you have a very valid point.

Melissa,
You’re welcome.

Toni January 2nd, 2008

You could aslo add this site, it is quite interesting
http://web.burza.hr/en/

Toni January 2nd, 2008

i wrote wrong e-mail in the post above…..

Cuban Cigars Dave January 3rd, 2008

Digital Mash really caught my eye.. and Basil Gloo. We’re in the process of redesigning. Our aim.. a different layout and the ability to be user friendly ! Possible ? I think so !

Alex January 3rd, 2008

CubanCigarsDave.com/nofollowownsyourface =)

Marcin Dmoch January 3rd, 2008

Thanks for publish my site too

Dejan Cancarevic January 3rd, 2008

thanks for the list, it’s really inspiring

Tay - Super Blogging January 3rd, 2008

Wow Steven, thanks for sharing these. There are some pretty cool and inspiring designs here. Just wondering, but how did you come across them all in order to compile such a great list?

hellcola January 4th, 2008

wow, I really enjoyed some of them!
I’ll get a custom one one of these days!

Sly from Slyvisions.com January 4th, 2008

Nice list there. All those sites had one thing in common (other than being unique): they were creatively done without using a layout as you said. In my experience, most of them have probably been made through Photoshop and other related tools.

440 January 5th, 2008

thank you for the great links!!! i translated some parts of this article in Japanese. if you have any problem with that, let me know.

Potos January 5th, 2008

I would recommend http://www.asvalia.com also.

Vrai January 5th, 2008

You missed a great one.

http://www.alienmelon.com/

For a graphics, web and flash design company.

Browse through it. You won’t be sorry.

Abu January 6th, 2008

Hii here is one page site

http://www.telugucinemastills.com

Malignition.com – The Don’ts of How To Make Money January 6th, 2008

I really like the Mussatto layout, it’s very original and functional. The second best is probably the Popmatik layout.

Jenny January 6th, 2008

wow all those make my work look like crap!! I wish I was that good.

web design new york January 8th, 2008

These are some really nice designs gotta bookmark this for future reference!

Glacier Real Estate January 8th, 2008

The list you compiled is great, some of the best techinical sites I have seen. I ran across this one http://crepp.net/ this ones good too.

massimo January 13th, 2008

Jan Gernen gives us this beautiful site design: http://www.yanone.de .
take a look

Working at Home Mom February 11th, 2008

Those are some really great website designs. I wish that I could do something like that.

Daily Common Sense February 16th, 2008

very nice designs!

rich math.man February 21st, 2008

Those are some good looking 20 websites. Good looking but I didn;t visit any of them. They are too fancy schmancy for me. I like down earth websites that contain information first and usefulness second and truhfulness third.

dENz February 25th, 2008

Wow… this are all great web site i ever seen specially melissa.com… keep it up melissa.. hope i can have like melissa’s web site

Lynn Pham April 9th, 2008

wow..thanks so much for the share.. They really are inspirational, all out of the box designs.. How bout some good web design with curves?

arwienu April 19th, 2008

this is great design. thanks for share man..maybe someone can try to design other unique layout . tell me if u do

Xtence June 19th, 2008

Very very nice, il ike these layouts very much, great job!!!

aoc gold June 28th, 2008

Very very nice

Vhic Hufana July 25th, 2008

Wow…very beautiful collections….I like swiths.com. Very creative and artistic!

Paul August 11th, 2008

That’s a great list right there. I need to learn how to design better :/

website design August 13th, 2008

Digitalmash rocks and interview magazine.I love the way they are layed out.

Flash Drive August 13th, 2008

Very very nice, il ike these layouts very much!!!

Synergy Informatics September 25th, 2008

hi,

all designs are really wonderful.. but ribbit is what I like the most…

sites described in the comments are also really nice…

it inspires us to design innovative designs…

btw… thanks for this wonderful compilation of designs..

mrcubo December 25th, 2008

some colorful things shining my eyes

Jonathan January 15th, 2009

I think you all should check out:

http://www.civilwarvideos.com

I made this website and I think it fits this category well.

Designer January 20th, 2009

not very appealing

wilu January 28th, 2009

Very nice websites:)
I like them.

Pradeep CD January 29th, 2009

Good collection.

Yes, they are uniq.

Live Msn March 3rd, 2009

I really like the Mussatto layout, it’s very original and functional. The second best is probably the Popmatik layout.

Mark Scerri April 2nd, 2009

An inspiring list

9pintuemas April 13th, 2009

i impressed of ur design… very unique…
good job..

prosenjit April 14th, 2009

great look :O

firdha April 14th, 2009

great gallery..^^

pablo April 22nd, 2009

I love the design of websites and davorvaneijk.com thehorizontalway.com

Vishang April 25th, 2009

Too good stuffs here.
I have never seen a ideas like these.
I have got good ideas from these site for my stydy Projects.
all the sites are good but i like the most is melissahei.com.

Videolu Dersler May 1st, 2009

great gallery..

Evelyn May 5th, 2009

Wow… all those websites are amazing, someday I’ll design one 100% flash =) hehe…

Thanks for the info!

webteders May 9th, 2009

Good collection.

Yes, they are uniq.

Ashely Adams : Sticker Printing May 22nd, 2009

Slide seems to be the buzzword these days. With improved hardware (read more RAM and processing power) and faster connectivity, the slid design can be an absolute pleasure for most users.

Actually, anything that challenges the vertical layout and up-and-down scrolling is fresh and interesting. The use of Ajax and the ‘no-refresh’ design also helps. Good post.

Justin May 30th, 2009

Whoa… this site is pretty awesome your layout is really well designed, and your blogs are (judging from what i’ve read) very interesting. heehee… consider yourself favorited.

webdesign July 8th, 2009

Very good designed websites.

william anderson July 15th, 2009

Love the list, very inspirational, having a block out day, good to see some stuff that I can feed from.

Amanda July 23rd, 2009

I love the creative and open ideas represented here, but for my own and my sisters websites, I have to keep them so they will appear properly on an 800×600 screen resolution as well as shifting (hopefully) seamlessly for higher resolutions, also keeping font large enough that old blind people can read it (parents, grandparents, family). Any ideas or design layouts that may be creative ways to meet these concerns?