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The most valuable and innovative ideas had all been handwritten first. That’s no big news, since designers tend to produce first sketches as paper prototypes anyway; still it’s important, because web design is different from “usual” design. Of course, it also has a personal note and it is hand-made, however users can’t see that. As CSS is “boxy but good”, designs tend to have a rather limited appearance — they are too boxy and too right-angled.

If designers want to achieve a different design, they have to draw their sites by themselves — or at least some parts of it. And in fact, this is done quite often: whether a blog, a shop, an ad, a private page, or some collaborative project — doesn’t matter whether with Flash or (X)HTML. The main purpose of hand-drawn elements lies in their ability to convey a personality and an individual note in times when colorful, sharp and rounded Web 2.0 elements can be found almost everywhere.

Sometimes designers create whole pages with paper, pencil and/or a tablet PC. More often single layout elements are designed in a special way — curved links, hand-made icons, backgrounds, notes, stickers and fuzzy lines are supposed to give the site a “human touch”. These elements makes a web-page which might not look different from dozens of similar pages, stand out and arise users’ curiosity. Caution: a quickly installed hand-written font can harm more than help (hint: Comic Sans is definitely not the way to go).

How impressive can the results be? And when can the hand-drawing style be used? Let’s take a look at some excellent examples of hand-drawing style in modern web design. All screenshots can be clicked and lead to the sites from which they’ve been taken.

1. Hand-drawing as artistic minimalism

Since hand-drawing is a typical feature of graphic artists, designers and illustrators and is often associated with creativity and inspiration, it is often used in portfolios and showcases.

The interesting thing is that the hand-drawn style is often the only element which is used by designers to present their work on their site. Below some examples of the artistic minimalism at its best.

Caution: Flash! The design is consistent throughout all pages of the site.

Hand-written navigation elements in use. Stylish and trendy. The font size is definitely too small, though.

Mel Kadel draws everything — even herself.

Both start page (top) and internal page (bottom) on this Brazilian site have hand-drawn elements. All internal pages have its own, unique style.

Heather Sloane illustrates with Flash.

Drawn elements complete a classic portfolio design. This design isn’t that minimalistic, but it doesn’t offer that much, neither.

2. The style supports the content

In some cases designers experiment with hand-drawn doodles to support the main content of the site rather than use hand-writing for main design elements. For instance, sketches are sometimes placed on the background of the site. Sometimes it works quite well.

In the design below similar idea is used. However, only 20-30% of the page actually serves the content presentation. This is not what most users are expecting and this is exactly what make this site different. Jakob Nielsen wouldn’t be fascinated about the content presentation on this site.

Also single design elements can be used in the hand-writing style. In the example below only an RSS-button on the right is hand-drawn.

3. The content incorporates the style

This example uses hand-written elements all across the site. It has a hand-written logo, hints, lines and even maps. The hand-drawn map on the start page contains links to single areas of the site.

While this is definitely an interesting and creative design, users might experience problems in finding the information they are looking for. In fact, visitors need to play around with the site to find out what information is actually presented.

The design also includes hand-drawn elements throughout the site, e.g. to display videos a sketch of the TV set is used, and even tables follow this style.

The content also incorporates the style in the HomeworkHouse (wax crayons).

An online-shop with a number of hand-drawn elements.

Simple yet impressive. Caution, Flash.

4. Hand-drawing combined with illustration

Since hand-drawn figures might sometimes lack visual appeal, this shortcoming is often addressed with the use of striking visual elements. The result is sometimes a wild, vivid, colorful — but always innovative design approach.

It’s important to note that such design decisions should be considered very precisely. It’s very easy to make the design more appealing by making it less intuitive at the same time. The design is different — not necessarily simplified or made more difficult to grasp. In fact, how well usability and accessibility issues are mastered depends mostly only on the developer’s skills.

What you see looks like a prototype: Joe Grisham’s site looks authentic, hand-made and uses illustrations.

This design combines hand-drawing style and vivid illustrations (comics). It isn’t supposed to be a Web 2.0 design.

This is a typical Web 2.0 design — with glossy buttons, reflections and (guess what!) hand-drawing style used for navigation, content and footer.

Hand-made style in the advertisement of a Casio-product. Flash in use.

Some designers intertwine the hand-drawing style with illustrations unifying them into a single design element. This produces an artistic, unexpected and intriguing design and motivates visitors to explore the site. Not all visitors will be willing to do that, actually.

Hand-drawing style hidden in details: Spinvox uses curved lines for the hover-effect.

A classic web-site with individual hand-written elements. Actually, it’s a site of a university. More hand-drawn elements can be found across the site.

5. Hand-drawing delivers the message

This aspect becomes more apparent in Web 2.0-designs. Hand-drawing elements are used to make it easier for users to get the idea behind the product and service which is offered. This works pretty well in both web and print design, as it gives the provided explanation a more personal, emotional and informal nature. Take a look at the examples below.

This is how a typical Web 2.0-site might look like once it’s provided with some additional visual cues.

Videoegg uses artistic elements in the navigation menu.

6. Hand-drawing taken to extreme

Sometimes it’s the designer’s purpose to impress, shock or entice the reader to get noticed and create a lasting impression. While there are a number of ways to achieve this, an unusual design style is definitely one of them; it is also the only style that delivers the artistic side of the design extremely well. Of course, it doesn’t always lead to usable web-sites.

A “sketchy” weblog. Where do you look at when you visit the site at the first time?

A drawn navigation menu at the top of the site also has some cute hover-effects.

Retro lives in this site.

6. Experiments and artistic approaches

Designers are artists, or at least they should try to be. And as such, designers tend to take radical design decisions, exploring their imagination and challenging visitors’ creativity. This doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does.

This Flash-based site literally lets you play with its content.

A portfolio with hand-writing: one more time.

An ultimate solution: Kuba Dabrowsky labels everything manually.

The style of street paintings. Yes, it looks quite trashy. But it is designed like this by purpose.

Kev Adamson: you won’t find any similar WordPress-template.

Maria Grossmann. The screenshot shows only a part of the page (Flash)

A weblog with a pig, curved lines, hand-drawn elements and a unique navigation menu. And, of course, the site also changes your cursor.

Portfolio designed with the the “old paper look” in mind.