Web Design Inspiration : Feeling Distressed

Nov 22, 2007 by     2 Comments    Posted under: Design Stuff!

The “distressed” look has been around for a long time and it is a style of design that I really like. I think it’s fair to say that this look tends to be reserved for creative or music related sites as well as extreme sports sites. Generally you won’t see a textured, distressed look on a big corporate or banking website.

The distressed look doesn’t come from a grunge-y font alone. Designers applying this style to their sites use textured elements in their work to remove the clean and shiney computer look. It often gives a “printed on trashed paper” feel or the idea that the website has spent the night sleeping on the street.

The following are a few samples of sites that I like and keep in my “morgue file” for inspiration.
Please feel free to let me know about some of the distressed looking (and I don’t mean sites from the late 90′s that desperately want a redesign) websites you like.

555 Design
555Design

Elliot Jay Stocks
Elliot Jay Stocks

Frozen Embryo
Frozen embryo

Juxt Interactive
juxt

Liquid Serebral
Liquid Serebral

2 Comments + Add Comment

  • I really like these designs..do you do tutorials on how to do this things?

  • Hi Webster,

    Thanks for visiting. I’ll try and put together something on how to make a distressed layout. It would make a good tutorial alright.

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