Seriously Professional Design Inspo
Have you seen many design agency websites that just jumped right out the screen at you? The kind that made you desperately want to either work there or dramatically overhaul your own website?
Design agencies have some of the coolest looking and most creative websites you’ll see. They’re selling their services as a creative agency, so they should have pretty amazing websites. Well here are eleven awesomely creative websites from design agencies from around the world.
Okay, so the criteria I’m using for this list is:
- Website is of a design and marketing agency, not solo-designers or any other website type
- The agency showcases their client work somewhere on the site
- Can be located anywhere in the world
- Should be highly creative and/or well designed but not so creative that functionality is hindered
- The website should be unique to other agency websites
- Shouldn’t be so unique that it induces seizures or has enormously long loading screens (No one wants that)
Kobu Agency
When you first view Kobu’s website, it actually opens with a loading screen. However, it’s so well designed you have no idea that’s what it is. After a moment you land on the homepage, which is brilliantly and simply designed with a bit of text and a background image that moves ever so subtly you’d think it was breathing. As you scroll down, you can view the rest of the homepage that details the personality of the company and some of their previous projects.
Overall, I love the design of this website. It’s so simple yet so creatively done. Their manifesto page is made up of the ideas that they run their company next to beautifully crafted, adorable illustrations. Going to the Contact section of the site is a great lesson in user experience as the site guides the user through their inquiry. An awesome website overall.
| Location | Portugal |
| Founded | 2014 |
| Employees | 11 – 50 |
Dog Studio
The Dog Studio website is the coolest looking website I’ve seen in a long time. You’re met immediately with something that feels alive. Then, as you scroll down, information appears around the 3D graphics. This homepage immediately plays ambient nature sounds upon entry, but it’s so subtle and calming this might be the only place I don’t mind hearing automatic sound.
| Location | Chicago, USA |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Employees | 11-50 |
Wokine
The Wokine site is lovely. I love the minimalist approach this site takes upon landing. Scrolling down engages the rest of the site information, and everything appears as a beautiful presentation of information. The typography in every area of the website is lovely and header areas consistently follow the same minimalist look
| Location | France |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Employees | 2-10 employees |
Lusion
The Lusion site is another website that uses subtle background motion very well, though their background ambient sound is a bit more menacing than I would like. Aside from that, the site overall is lovely. I really like how all the background images respond to the movement of your mouse; it makes the whole site very fun to interact with, especially the very last one at the bottom of the page. It’s creepy and super cool. Also, the About page is insanely cool.
| Location | Bristol, England |
| Founded | 2017 |
| Employees | 2 – 10 |
5s Content
The website for 5S might not be the most visually stunning on this list, but it’s still a well designed website that knows how to properly utilize a parallax effect. The alignment of elements is a bit random, yet it works. Overall, I think the coolest thing about this website is that the background colour changes every time you click. It’s not huge, but that small feature makes it an enjoyable site to visit.
| Location | Montreal, Canada |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Employees | 2- 10 |
Bear Ideas
The entire bear theme on the Bear Ideas site runs strong and it works so well. Initially, the site gives you an option of a light or dark theme by choosing ‘polar bear’ or ‘black bear’. As someone who prefers viewing dark websites, I appreciate this a lot. I love everything about how this website is structured; from the individual page layout to how the bear theme plays out in the Who We Are page. The simple colour scheme of dark grey, yellow, and white looks fantastic. This is an extremely polished looking website.
| Location | Paris, France |
| Founded | 2013 |
| Employees | 11 – 50 |
Vault 49
Vault 49 has a very cool website. It uses a very simple colour scheme and structured layout, but in a unique way. It’s also a lot of fun to explore the subtle details in this site that make it unique; like the cursor activated motion effects and the rotating 3D text on the About page.
| Location | New York, USA |
| Founded | 2002 |
| Employees | 11 – 50 |
Zajno
Zajno’s website is another one that utilizes subtle background motion well and shows off as more of a presentation than a website. It uses a simple colour scheme, large text sizes, and small details to produce a great website experience. In addition, the Works page is a great example of how to display a portfolio that showcases projects in an interesting and interactive way.
| Location | California, USA |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Employees | 11 – 50 |
Locomotive
The website for Locomotive is a lot of fun to explore. When you first land on the page, Locomotive displays their work in a creative way; letting you move the cursor to scroll between items. This is a fun an interactive way for people to explore the work they’ve done. The whole site uses interactive elements as you scroll, letting you play with text and elements on the site. The Team page is particularly well done, using Nintendo Mii-like characters to indicate the team members in a unique way.
| Location | Montreal, Canada |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Employees | 11 – 50 |
No Format
The No Format website is yet another great example of using a cursor to manipulate background motion on a landing page. As soon as you begin to scroll down the page, the format changes and the transitions from scene to scene are really great. The homepage is very much set up like a presentation, with each chunk of information being its own slide. It works really well here, and this format flows into their other site pages.
| Location | New York, USA |
| Founded | 2001 |
| Employees | 11 – 50 |
Vintage
It’s the details in the Vintage website that make it so unique. The hover-over effect to make text glitch, the shapes moving by influence of the cursor, and so many other small details make this a great site to visit. This website is so polished in every way and the typography is beautiful. This is the type of website that really proves to potential clients that you’re one of the best in your field.
| Location | Ukraine |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Employees | 51 – 200 |
Best Design Agency Websites From Around: In Summary
Hopefully this list of websites gave you a great big dose of design inspiration; I know it did for me. It also made me look at my own portfolio site and want to suddenly learn motion design so I could do something even half as creative as the sites above.
Are there any other awesome design agency websites I should include on this list? Let me know in the comments below!
Photo Credits
Photo by Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash
