Vandelay Design

40 Beautifully-Designed Navigation Menus

Published November 12th, 2009 in Galleries

Navigation menus are, of course, important for usability purposes and creating a user-friendly website, but they also provide opportunities to add some visual appeal to the design. In this post we’ll showcase 40 examples of attractive navigation menus, including a variety of different types and styles.

For more on navigation menus please see:

Utah Travel

Utah Travel

Lift Interactive

Lift Interactive

MailChimp

MailChimp

Idea Foundry

Idea Foundry

The Creative Dot

The Creative Dot

Michael Dick

Michael Dick

Mission Community Church

Mission Community Church

Sushi & Robots

Sushi & Robots

Wonderbra Ultimate Strapless

Wonderbra Ultimate Strapless

Light CMS

Light CMS

Two24 Studios

Two24 Studios

Typejockeys

Typejockeys

Ecosimply

Ecosimply

Glue

Glue

Adcetera Digital

Adcetera Digital

LogoCranium

LogoCranium

Matty Studios

Matty Studios

Design Bridge

Design Bridge

Robert Alan

Robert Alan

Toggle

Toggle

Southern Media

Southern Media

Delete

Delete

Powerful CMS

Powerful CMS

Levi’s

Levi's

Organic Supermarket

Organic Supermarket

World In My Lens

World In My Lens

Affiliateo

Affiliateo

My Opera

My Opera

Kreative News

Kreative News

Red Velvet Art

Red Velvet Art

The Seven Five

The Seven Five

Pasadena Symphony and Pops

Pasadena Symphony and Pops

West Coast Poppin

West Coast Poppin

Veer

Veer

The Invoice Machine

The Invoice Machine

Tennessee Vacation

Tennessee Vacation

Ekklesia 360

Ekklesia 360

Show & Tell Consignment Sale

Show & Tell Consignment Sale

Inner Metro Green

Inner Metro Green

Apple Reviews

Apple Reviews

For more design inspiration please see:

76 Responses to “40 Beautifully-Designed Navigation Menus”

Eric B. November 12th, 2009

Navigation is absolutely one of the most important parts of usability. These are some very nicely designed navigation menus.

Thanks for sharing!

Design Informer November 12th, 2009

WOAH! Great collection of menus. Utah Travel looks really nice. I haven’t seen most of these before. Thanks Steven.

Peach November 12th, 2009

Those are very nice navigation menus. Thanks for sharing.

Mothership November 12th, 2009

Excellent collection once again.

For me, Utah travel had some promise, but the menu is seriously broken in Safari 4.0.4/10.6.2.

Thanks :-)

DesignDazzling November 12th, 2009

navigation is main part of website and this is a really nice designs for navigation

Ejaz Ahmad November 12th, 2009

great menu design collection it will be very helping for web designers

thanks

Zed November 12th, 2009

OH! How nice! I love the typejockeys’ navigation menu! Thanks for sharing.

aledesign.it November 12th, 2009

Beautiful collection. I need a post like this. Useful! Thanks for the sharing!

designfollow November 12th, 2009

great collection

thanks

deltacubed web design November 12th, 2009

Great collection, thanks for sharing. I’ve tried to use some of the concepts shown here in the primary nav on my site. So much inspiration here makes me want to redesign again!

Zohaib November 12th, 2009

Impressive

Selvam November 12th, 2009

thanks…nice collection

Jacob Yap November 12th, 2009

Really beautiful collection.

nil November 12th, 2009

thanks nice and good collections …. gr8

web design services stoke November 12th, 2009

Excellent collection of navigations. You can really set the standards for a great design once you have a fantastic navigation . Thank you

saurabh shah November 12th, 2009

Thats the cool collection …

Edward Lewis November 12th, 2009

Cool post.. some really good examples :)

Thomas November 12th, 2009

Really nice inspiration, I love the Delete and Type Jockey designs.

Mike De Greef November 12th, 2009

Some are diamonds, will certainly inspirate me to use them in upcoming website’s.

Thx

sam ross November 12th, 2009

Navigation is enormously one of the the majority important parts of usability. These are several very nicely premeditated course-plotting menus.

Ivan November 12th, 2009

Ecosimply is very, very nice. I go download it. Thank you.

Jason Walker November 12th, 2009

Thanks for including my site, it’s an honor to be included with the others. Really like the Utah Travel site, very well done.

The Boss November 12th, 2009

Great collection – definitely helps to see highly creative navigation structures when having to create a new one myself.

I’ll shamelessly list this navigation structure that I built for Cupcakes Actually which I believe turned out well. My inspiration for it was twofold. First, cake fondant. Second, ribbons.

I really like what Robert Alan did with his site’s navigation. It’s very simple visually, but I think it’s neat how the caption bubble graphic breaks out of that horizontal plane below. Good contrast.

paulo November 12th, 2009

Great collection – thanks for collating them all together. You guys make my job so much easier :) Cheers!

Rahul - Web Guru November 12th, 2009

Really nice navigation menus here.

Anggi@icreativelabs November 13th, 2009

You Always inspiring me :D

Andrian November 13th, 2009

Like This !!

Detroit November 13th, 2009

Thanks for this resource for dropdown menus.. Great templates to work off of!

Krypton November 13th, 2009

This is awesome. Thanks for the tips.

Memoryweaver November 13th, 2009

Wow, this was a particularly useful article — these summary articles are so useful to get really really quick inspiration — I scroll rapidly down them until I see something I like, then bookmark any that look like they contain ideas that are compatible with anything I’m working on. This sort of ‘ideas cloud’ all goes into the mix when tweaking aspects of a design.

smokinghotchick November 13th, 2009

wow, I will design my site this way now,hahahaha

Nick November 13th, 2009

Thanks man! Really cool collection. It would be very usefull for me!

Jen November 13th, 2009

Almost all of the designs exceed my own creative skills. They are beautiful and impressive. But I must note, that when I disabled the images on several of these sites, the navigation was no longer visible or usable. That’s a little disappointing.

loswl November 13th, 2009

Very nice set of inspirational designs, really creative ways of doing menus :)

Serina November 13th, 2009

Great collection. I can see the growing popularity of subheadings for menu items.

Thanks for the inspiration!

North Cyprus November 14th, 2009

I really liked the The Creative Dot.
Its very cool

Vitezslav Valka November 14th, 2009

Well, thank you for the inspiration. We’re doing it the same way and we’re putting a little bit of usability spices :-)

Michelle November 14th, 2009

really nice navigation menus here, it must have taken you such a long time to collect them all, thank you for your hard work and for sharing :)

Sonicatu November 14th, 2009

Very interesting. Thanks for the tips.

Autonomy November 16th, 2009

I don’t know why some of these are featured on here as it seems I have seen them many times before. However, there are plenty of original gems in here. Thanks.

A.D.K. November 16th, 2009

Awesome list. Thanks

Bobby November 16th, 2009

My vote is for the Creative Dot. Excellent icons, clean design.

Black Katz - rent in London November 17th, 2009

Another brilliant bit of inspiration for the rest of us! Thanks for doing all the hard work and compiling such a great gallery.

Alex Flueras November 17th, 2009

Excellent collection, thanks for sharing ! Here is another example of simple navigation using LavaLamp effect in jQuery: http://www.studioweber.com – minimal, clean layout.

Tampa Web Design November 17th, 2009

I love the way W3C did their new site. For the longest time they had a very skimpy site when it came to design and now they have finally done themselves justice with their new design. I saw you had their nav on your list and want leave my opinion.

Thanks
Great List!

Trevor Collins November 17th, 2009

Thanks for collecting these together for us!

John November 18th, 2009

I love http://www.saulcraviotto.com.Simple, but different.

Webazia November 22nd, 2009

Very good examples and definitely a great source of inspiration. Thanks for the list!

James November 22nd, 2009

Nice Collection! Thanks for putting all of them together !
Now one can fine navigation menus related inspiration in one place ;)
Again Thanks for sharing!!!

Andreas November 23rd, 2009

Thanks for this beautiful collection.

luis angel November 23rd, 2009

Nice collection, very inspirational, I added to my del.icio.us

adam November 25th, 2009

you’re so nice,I really like these collection

Dr John November 26th, 2009

I haven’t visited for a while, and when I do, I find this excellent set of menus to view! I always have problems with inspiration for menu ideas, and was making a similar collection myself (some of which are in here!) but your list is pretty good by anyone’s standards.

And it forms a nice update to your earlier lists from last year. Hope you make this list an annual event.

amigo November 28th, 2009

cool collection!! Thanks:D

soga169 November 29th, 2009

Nice collections! Much thanks for sharing!

fagot November 29th, 2009

Nice list there. Always good to see some fresh ideas on how we can make our navigation better. After all it is one of the most important parts! Thanks guys! :)

Thanks for this list of websites. An inspiring very diverse.

malezya February 2nd, 2010

I really liked the The Creative Dot.
Its very cool

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