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Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples

By Smashing Editorial, February 26th, 2008 in Design Showcase | 259 Comments | Forum

Navigation is the most significant element in web design. Since web-layouts don’t have any physical representation a user can stick to, consistent navigation menu is one of the few design elements which provide users with some sense of orientation and guide them through the site. Users should be able to rely on it which is why designers shouldn’t mess around with it.

That’s why in most cases it’s where simple, intuitive and conventional solutions are usually the best option. However, it doesn’t mean that they need to be boring. One year ago we’ve presented modern approaches of navigation design. Let’s take a look at what’s different now, which trends one can observe and what ideas you can develop further in your projects.

This article presents recent trends, examples and innovative solutions for design of modern navigation menus. All images are clickable and lead to the sites from which they’ve been taken. We’ve missed something? Definitely! Let us know in the comments!

1. Trend toward “speaking” block navigation

The most significant task a navigation menu has to fulfill is to unambiguously guide the visitors through the different sections of the site. However, often it’s quite hard to communicate the content of a site section within one or two single keywords, particularly if horizontal navigation is in use. That’s why often navigation options aren’t simply listed one after each other using some appropriate keyword (”silent” navigation); instead, designers attempt to concretely explain which options are available and what the visitor should expect from site sections once clicking on corresponding links.

In fact, over the last months we’ve observed a strong trend toward exactly this navigation scheme; and since designers try to initiate a more effective dialogue with visitors we prefer to call it “speaking” navigation — contrary to “silent” navigation based upon the listing of keywords.

To make the perception of information easier, the navigation is often structured by using blocks of the same height and width; large icons are used quite often, but in most cases the decision whether they are appropriate or not depends on the content of the site and the overall layout. “Soft” hover-effects often support the navigation design by making the browsing more pleasant.

This navigation scheme can be used not only for the horizontal navigation; it can can be applied to vertical navigation as well.

2. Mac-style still popular?

One can discuss if the Mac-style is the survivor of the Web 2.0 design attack or it becomes a standalone design element used independently from glossy colorful buttons with 3D-effects. Or maybe it’s just a temporary trends toward grunge style — nobody knows, really.

In any case over the last months a number of web-sites integrated Mac-styled-navigation in their web-sites. What’s interesting is that the style is used not only on Apple-related sites, but also on web-sites which aren’t directly related to Mac. Particularly when it comes to design of software products traditional Mac-style is often imitated. Reason: it is visually appealing and looks cool.

A navigation bar doesn’t need to look exactly like a typical Mac-style-navigation. Variations are also possible.

“Green” version of the traditional Mac-style menu

Since navigation bars can’t exist alone and need to be supported by the overall design, colorful one-page-sites with happy talk and overused stock photos designers are being replaced with more decent, serious and calm layouts. And that’s a good thing. However, when using the Mac-style please keep in mind that it shouldn’t be used for the sake of it but has to fit to the overall design.

3. Visually appealing icons are used more often

To communicate navigation options in a more effective way, designers often make use of appealing icons. In such cases it’s important to make sure that the icon is easily recognizable, clearly conveys the message, corresponds to the link it stands for and isn’t too small. Attractive icons are, of course, always preferred to the boring ones.

Icons can also be hidden into the links; this effect should be used sparingly.

Screenshot

Icons can be placed on the left-hand side…

…and on the right-hand side in the sidebar.

4. Vertical tabs

Although traditional desktop-applications almost never make use of vertical tabs, in the office vertical tabs are used at least as often as horizontal ones. In fact, designers often try it out; and the results can be quite interesting.

Before using vertical tabs you should make sure that it is possible within your layout and you actually have enough area to cover all navigation options on every single page. And, of course, the text is harder to read.

Tabs on the right-hand side.

5. Handwriting in use.

Recently we already discussed the hand-drawing style in modern web-design. And what holds for design layouts also holds for its specific elements — for instance, for navigation.

Screenshot

6. Experimental solutions

Although it’s usually not the best idea to come up with some strange and/or unique site navigation, designers tend to risk crazy and uncommon experiments. When trying out something new, make sure that you don’t put the usability of your site in danger by creating unnecessary barriers for your visitors. Any navigation menu fails if users can’t make sense out of it.

DesignForFun uses icons to help visitors to filter the content they’re looking for. Depending on the clicked icon the background of corresponding links changes. However, the selection of icons may be not the best one as it’s unclear hat icons stand for. Fortunately, title attribute is in use.

Interesting concept: the hover-effect on jBunti depends on the selected month of the year. Warm months are associated with reddish colors, cold months with blueish colors. 12 hover-colors in use.

Playground Blues tries out something completely different; each of 12 site sections has its color in the left sidebar. Once the visitor hovers the mouse arrow over the left-hand sidebar the icons pop up providing visitors with navigation options. Title-attribute is used as well. And to make sure visitors actually can find the navigation the icons pop out like harmonica first time the page is loaded.

Steven Holl is an architect. Which is why his navigation menu looks like an architectural sketch. Each navigation option is given some weight in the map — apparently according to its weight on the site.

Polkdesign uses a calender as the central navigation element. Flash.

Hopkingdesign offers not a tabbed-navigation; it’s a vertical navigation placed at the top of the page. Looks at least unusual.

No, Adipintilie.eu has navigation options also placed at the top; however, these are only external links.

Flash-based 3D-effect used on Gol.com.pl. The menu can also be expanded.

The navigation on Wards-Exchange.co.uk fits to the brochure design. Or the other way around.

On Kriesi.at the hovered navigation option is dynamically expanded and shows the icons which illustrate what to expect in the section of the site. The effect is in this case not necessary.

Not really new, but still beautiful. Folietto.at uses the free area effectively and sparingly. You may notice an interesting visual effect when hovering the links.

inBloom has a menu with animation. The beetle doesn’t care what option you choose, it crawls its long path through the navigation tree anyway. This is an example of how animation can be unobtrusive.

Cobahair.co.uk uses only BIG typography…

…and HelloColor.com uses small typography with rainbow colors.

Carbonstudio.co.uk delivers a Flash-based navigation menu with sound-effects. It may sound annoying, but it isn’t: every navigation option has its own sound. If you train yourself a little bit you can even play your own melody while listening to birds in the background.

Maxandlous.com provides hover-effects with visual hints. It looks nice and unusual.

Scrollomania in all possible directions on Letters-Numbers.com.

OK, how can you come up with this one? Nickad’s Flash-based construct becomes visible only if the mouse is clicked and remains being clicked.

Nike offers a kind of remote control. To navigate you need to click and drag. While dragging, move the mouse up to move forward, down to move backward, and left/right to turn.

Published in Design Showcase, February 26th, 2008
Tags: ideas, menus, navigation

1.

Rolando Bouza (February 26th, 2008, 10:23 am)

I dont think mac style is still popular…

My fav: letters-numbers.com
2.

readywpthemes (February 26th, 2008, 10:24 am)

Very nice collection again. Thank you…
3.

Shane (February 26th, 2008, 10:37 am)

I’m not a fan of vertical tabs, but that’s just me I suppose - I find they’re ever-so-slightly harder to read than horizontally aligned text.

‘Speaking navigation’ is ok too - but one could argue that if the main link isn’t self explanatory, then it needs to be reworded - that extra text may ‘help’ explain, but in many cases, I feel it’s overkill.
4.

Gelay (February 26th, 2008, 10:37 am)

Really like cobahair.co.uk. A great list. Thanx.
5.

Jason Reed (February 26th, 2008, 10:39 am)

I good variance in navigation types. This should be a good reference to come back to whenever a navigation creative block comes about.

Personally, I think navigation design is what makes websites in today’s world so popular. Intuitive, and more importantly user centered navigation is what makes some sites so popular. Content is easy to reach without a lot of time searching mindlessly. The experimental navigation systems are nice, but I would always suggest only using them on “personal playground” sites, where a committed community is already willing to spend a few extra seconds to navigate to the content they desire, because they know the overall outcome is going to be beneficial.

My suggestion for personal portfolio sites and more organized company showcases is to keep it simple. Sure, the client sees first hand exactly what kind of cool stuff you can do with Javascript or Flash, but if they have a hard time navigating to the section of your site that they want to see, it is going to say a lot about their own user centered design concerns.

I feel like I am rambling…great list!
6.

niksy (February 26th, 2008, 10:40 am)

Nice collection, thanks…
7.

fatihturan (February 26th, 2008, 10:41 am)

Really nice collection! Thanks.
8.

im suden (February 26th, 2008, 11:05 am)

Link [www.useit.com]. These might be new approaches, but they don’t really serve any useful purpose. Most actually hinder navigation. Reading horizontally strikes me as particularly silly, while having to explain a link is admitting that you can’t express yourself concisely. All they tell me is that the designer can either code some abstruse CSS and/or a graphic designer is in charge of the design.

Contextual navigation (especially through breadcrumbs) should be the future. My site has no universal navigation apart from a logo in the top left corner that links to the home page.
9.

fck (February 26th, 2008, 11:21 am)

Nice collection!
10.

lukxiufung (February 26th, 2008, 11:45 am)

I would like to ask question about css, isit possible to make the mac button in css which can be used in all browser? Anyone can help how to code it ?
11.

Brian (February 26th, 2008, 11:49 am)

You are Smashing some great articles of late! Navigation is a topic I love to revisit often - it’s inspiring and fun to read of the new, old, new again trends etc.
12.

Jeff Adams (February 26th, 2008, 11:59 am)

very useuful list, especially for inspiration for a new design im working on for my site! i ALWAYS loved the Mac designs, but im moving towards sites that have more icons on them to give user feedback.

im not a fan of the grunge designs but i can see why they are popular.
13.

Cosmi (February 26th, 2008, 12:00 pm)

Nice collection, thanks for share.
By the way… hellocolor.com link doesn’t work. I think you forget the “http://”
14.

Daniel (February 26th, 2008, 12:09 pm)

Very nice collection!
Thanks.
15.

Kerri (February 26th, 2008, 1:41 pm)

I really like the navigation on this site: Link [timothysykes.com]
Anyone here know how they did that? Is it ajax? I’m sure there’s some code available somewhere…
16.

Ted (February 26th, 2008, 2:14 pm)

Well done Smashing Magazine, another great article and a great collection of menus.

I also like the effect used on this site:

Looks like it uses Mootools for the menu effect and also hiding of the navigation.
17.

Greg (February 26th, 2008, 3:09 pm)

while it’s cool, NickAd’s site navigation raises my anxiety levels.
18.

Aaron (February 26th, 2008, 3:28 pm)

Nice selection of menus there, made me feel like I’d better pull my finger out and sort mine now.
19.

pickupjojo (February 26th, 2008, 3:44 pm)

Great selection as usual!
I love the pink one, it could looks nice on my weblog. :)
20.

Erdem (February 26th, 2008, 3:55 pm)

Very nice collection
21.

HelloColor (February 26th, 2008, 4:09 pm)

..however, that rainbow menu is the one, that I had on my previous portfolio version, still to see at:

Link [nrb.oxygenetic.org]

Thanks,
P

:]
22.

Jason Reed (February 26th, 2008, 4:39 pm)

@lukxiufung (# 10)

Yeah, there is an easy way to make all buttons universal using CSS (assuming you mean an input button such as submit).

all you need to do is create a class and then apply it to your input tag.

An example…

input.button {
background: url(”images/button.jpg”) top left no-repeat;
width: 100px;
height: 25px;
}

input.button:hover {
background: url(”images/button_hover.jpg”) top left no-repeat;
}

Although a bit more advanced I would suggest creating both states in the same image and then just shifting the background position, this way you don’t get a weird white flicker while the hover state image loads.

I am still learning CSS so by all means please someone correct me if I am wrong.
23.

Jimmy (February 26th, 2008, 4:41 pm)

Very nice collection. I like the experimental solutions, some of them really stands out!
24.

Braintrove.com (February 26th, 2008, 5:13 pm)

Fun to see what people are using out there. As site overhauls are (or should be) few and far between so as not to overly confuse your visitors, it is important to find something visually appealing that works, and then make minor tweaks along the way.
25.

steven (February 26th, 2008, 6:07 pm)

… i love you guys, but do you think that you can start making all your links open in a new window … ?
that would be lovely seeing that you always have 50+ links on one posting …

just something to ponder .
26.

Lock Wes Monster (February 26th, 2008, 6:29 pm)

Link [www.whitevoid.com]

Here is an example of an “experimental solution” that makes great use of papervision3d.
27.

Wender (February 26th, 2008, 7:08 pm)

The menu of this site is very different and beautiful: Link [www.bambubali.com.br]
28.

John Faulds (February 26th, 2008, 7:33 pm)

That Nickad menu is really hard to use. :/
29.

Rafael (February 26th, 2008, 8:09 pm)

We from enilsson use the vertical tabs as well… very interesting concept.

Link [www.enilsson.com]
30.

One Winged Angel (February 26th, 2008, 9:25 pm)

I keep saying ‘how beautiful they are’ - some of them, of course.. really inspire me.
31.

Marlyse Comte (February 26th, 2008, 10:10 pm)

Great assembly as usual. Some go into making it really difficult and adventurous for the viewer to find his/her way, but I guess if that is the name of the game, so be it!

Seeing some of the horizontal navigation tabs write ‘downward’ is (mostly) not reader friendly. Bottom up with base of font closer to the reader is what gives best readability.
32.

Syed Balkhi (February 26th, 2008, 11:16 pm)

I am more of a horizontal menu bar with the hover effect matching the nav buttons to the rest. Vertical navigation just gives me a hard time.
33.

koollook (February 27th, 2008, 12:31 am)

great collection! here´s a another “trendy” menu: Link [www.pxldlx.de]
34.

Martijn Moes (February 27th, 2008, 1:02 am)

Nice collection guys..
35.

sergey (February 27th, 2008, 1:34 am)

just superb!
36.

Corentin (February 27th, 2008, 1:35 am)

The mac style applied to a Geographic Information Service Web Application is very pleasant : Link [www.metis-light.com]
This GIS Web Application is still under development (visual problems under IE…).
37.

WorkingMan (February 27th, 2008, 2:32 am)

Hey Keri, it looks like the “Timothy Sykes” site is using “jQuery”. A collection of various javascripts and a base collection of code for use on your websites. The effect is called “lava lamp”. I’ve seen it before and found that I liked how it looked and reacted too! Here is a link to where you can see the lava lamp code explained and there are some examples at the bottom of the page, one like the “Sykes” menu. Link [www.gmarwaha.com]
38.

Giorgio (February 27th, 2008, 2:34 am)

nice picks! i think navigation on Link [www.hejz.com] is wicked as well
39.

Roweena (February 27th, 2008, 2:40 am)

Great inspirational collection! Also noticing the (small) trend in horizontal scrolling websites, not quite sure how I feel about this…guess it works in some situations.
40.

rayelle (February 27th, 2008, 3:09 am)

I think some of the ‘overly designed’ navigation completely miss the point of what navigation is supposed to be used for. What is the point of hiding the navigation??
41.

superxtian (February 27th, 2008, 3:26 am)

another awesome collection!
42.

Gruppo Modulo (February 27th, 2008, 3:30 am)

Great collection, fantastic inspiration!

Thank you!
43.

johno (February 27th, 2008, 4:01 am)

Very timely indeed. I was just thinking about redoing my own menus. Certainly bucket-loads of inspiration above. Many thanks SM.
44.

the l-i-n-k (February 27th, 2008, 4:08 am)

@rayelle I totally agree: Some of those navigation concepts are overdone.

Navigation is crucial for a website, because you don’t have sheets to turn. But in any case the content is the reason to visit your website.

Thank you for the elaborated collection - it’s interesting to see common principles, even if they might be critical or need discussion. That’s we’re on a blog…
45.

Daniel (February 27th, 2008, 5:46 am)

Fantastic! Thank you for this!
46.

Ivan (February 27th, 2008, 7:12 am)

Defign4Fun is my favorite! Dunno how he did it, but it works!
47.

Bruce Coursey (February 27th, 2008, 9:37 am)

Very good. I hope more people will use these ideas.
48.

Scott (February 27th, 2008, 4:44 pm)

Funny seeing the steven holl website on the list.
The page is a great improvement from his last one but i think it could use larger letters.
Also after you navigate away from the main page the navigation gets annoying in my opinion.
49.

Veera (February 27th, 2008, 11:36 pm)

Nice collection. Useful. Hope people will buy these ideas!
50.

Paolo (February 28th, 2008, 12:28 am)

this collection is useful to collect new ideas!
thanks!
51.

maheshexp (February 28th, 2008, 12:55 am)

Cool collections…was dreaming in blend of color they use..
52.

CubidoN (February 28th, 2008, 1:23 am)

Thanks, great posts!
53.

OverZero.it (February 28th, 2008, 2:18 am)

Outstanding.
54.

klauskinski (February 28th, 2008, 2:26 am)

wonderful portfolio of ideas … :)
thx for that
55.

Social Browser (February 28th, 2008, 5:22 am)

Ya know, smashing magazine really pisses me off. Every time I read a post this good I get really frustrated and start thinking “do I have to redo my site” and “is my site good enough?” I have to stop and take a couple deep breaths and put everything back into perspective. That typography poster article is still haunting me because some of the design is so fresh.
56.

Michael (February 28th, 2008, 7:35 am)

I love the content you offer. One suggestion however; it would be much easier if you could code the links to open up in a new window or tab versus the parent page. That way I could review the content and easily return to your page and pick back up where I left off. Anyway, keep up the good work. It is always nice to see relevant content.
57.

imaginepaolo (February 28th, 2008, 10:37 am)

Wath about my horizontal menu? Link [www.imaginepaolo.com]
58.

Patsy (February 28th, 2008, 11:51 am)

This really is the best site ever. It really helps with ideas. Keep them coming!
59.

webthese (February 28th, 2008, 5:40 pm)

Very nice collection… i like them especially mac type navigations… thanks.
60.

Alistair Reid (February 28th, 2008, 10:46 pm)

Great source of inspiration for the designer with a heavy workload!

vertical tabs can’t be live text, so there are accessibility and updateability issues. You need a very good reason to go to the vertical menu!!
61.

Peer Wandiger - Selbständig im Netz (February 28th, 2008, 11:58 pm)

That’s a great resource of different navigations. Many of them are really beautiful.
I will bookmark this page to get inspiration when I need it.
62.

sandeep (February 29th, 2008, 12:40 am)

Nice collection!
63.

dharma (February 29th, 2008, 2:35 am)

While some of them look good, we also need to admit that many of them are a usability nightmare…
64.

TOD (February 29th, 2008, 5:19 am)

Thank you for this list. It’s awesome.
“1. Trend toward “speaking” block navigation” I have seen these styles during the [dot com bubble].
What it was was the 2 language combination, both horizontal and vertical navigation styles.
However, the idea of speaking navigation is the trend…
65.

Ralph (February 29th, 2008, 10:15 am)

yeah… great article with many very nice ideas for me. Example 2 is similar like here: Link [www.das-zenSuR.de].

thank you for your great job

From Germany

Ralph
66.

Webdesigner (February 29th, 2008, 10:18 am)

Awesome design tips! Thanks a lot!
67.

webunicorn (March 1st, 2008, 4:36 am)

very usefull article
thank you for your effort
the vertical navigation is hard to read as you said and it’s not suitable for common use
NIckad and the playground blues menus are the worse because it’s not cross browser compatible and you can easily miss it
but you put other great resources for grea ideas
thank you
68.

paul (March 1st, 2008, 7:37 am)

Some of these concepts are great, unfortunatelythe coding is kind ofcrap on a few of them they don’t work on my MAC :(
69.

Nix (March 2nd, 2008, 7:11 pm)

Great collection :) I like them! Good work!
70.

Charlie Nielsen (March 4th, 2008, 1:48 am)

Hmm .. Nice collection with a good overview. I guess that finding the right solution is a simple matter of planning the design thoroughly through first. Vertical tabs are pretty nifty as the save space, that can be used way more intelligent, but as they’re harder to read, the typography and usage is important. I’m thinking of using some in one of our systems as a test .. (it’s just css, so why not try it ..) :D
71.

john ozolett (March 4th, 2008, 3:15 am)

Can someone explain me how i can realise a menu like the digitalartifex.com guys?
I am sure there is a complete solution somewhere in the internet.
72.

Dan (March 5th, 2008, 8:04 am)

I’m not sure whether your comments are valid as , with all due respect, your site is an absolute mess.
73.

Marc (March 6th, 2008, 6:41 am)

Nice list. Although there seems to be a lot of people missing the point of articles like this - someone mentioned that all sites should use breadcrumbs for navigation…are you serious?! Experimentation is the only way to truly move forward and lists like this one show what is possible.

I think it’s worth noting that a large proportion of the more experimental navs are on designers sites who are showing that they’re capable of thinking outside the box. A lot of clients are looking for creativity so in these instances I think it’s entirely justifiable to have something less mainstream (as long as it stil works of course!)

Just wanted to say that I really like the ’speaking’ buttons style, there’s nothing worse than ambiguous navigation - and I bet it doesn’t hurt your page rankings either, aren’t descriptive links what Google are all about?
74.

Felix (March 6th, 2008, 7:05 am)

really good list. Thanks!
75.

Martin (March 6th, 2008, 9:57 am)

Great collection ! Man thanks for another great post !
76.

Chris (March 7th, 2008, 7:46 am)

Lovely round-up - I never knew that I had come to hate some styles of navigation so much. However lots of tasty ideas here too…
77.

Steve Firth (March 8th, 2008, 3:24 pm)

Some beautiful navs there, just in process of redesigning my site and was goign to use javascript to make it more interesting but now I’m thinking it’s just not needed.
78.

Shobhit (March 11th, 2008, 8:46 am)

Real Gud ones..
thanks a lot Smashing..

u guys are real SMASHING…..
79.

Daniel (March 15th, 2008, 9:14 am)

This page it’s really cool… these nav menu exemplos help me a lot .
Good work!
80.

Carla (March 19th, 2008, 8:40 am)

I am a fan of the ’speaking block’ navigation. There’s no better user experience than one where it feels the designer is holding your hand as you walk through the website.
81.

Randy (March 25th, 2008, 2:41 pm)

I think the mac button is not css. I reckon it is done in photoshop because as you can see in the button, it has a little bit gradient. You can do it in CSS but not perfectly look like what you can see in Mac Button and 1 more thing it should be web safe color. I suggest you to do it in Photoshop and use javascript for hovering the button.
82.

china girl (April 1st, 2008, 5:25 pm)

very good!thanks
83.

andol (April 2nd, 2008, 4:49 am)

i really admire those authors who designed these works.
so i think no matter whether it is popular still,
at least it is art we appreciate.
84.

ferd_randa (April 2nd, 2008, 7:10 pm)

they are are very good designers.. nice one!
85.

Secret Owl (April 3rd, 2008, 5:52 pm)

Oh, wow, thanks for the list! Gave me some ideas for my navigation. Man, menus are a pain in the ass…
86.

JC (April 7th, 2008, 10:08 pm)

FAO: im suden

It’s all very well quoting or linking to Jakob Neilsons site, but useable or not his site is incredibly ugly. In fact the content is so lacking in structure as to actually hinder useability - which content is important? Where do I look first? Why do I have to scroll to see some of the top level navigation?

Laughable really.

If you don’t believe there is any room for aesthetics in websites then why on earth come to a site that celebrates design?
87.

Pandu (April 11th, 2008, 4:43 am)

Good study of navigation design.
very good.
88.

Alexander (April 12th, 2008, 2:52 pm)

It’s all good stuff but I still like normal, traditional navigation.
89.

arjun (April 16th, 2008, 5:13 pm)

to the author of the article:

what metrics do you have (other than the Apple example) that convince you that these are all sound UIs?
90.

subac (April 17th, 2008, 1:27 am)

very cool collections…
My wishes to al those who ahve worked on this appealing set of navigation
91.

Jan Novak (April 17th, 2008, 12:22 pm)

Very nice experimental navigation is used on website Link [www.arin.cz]
92.

Debabrata Ghosh (April 29th, 2008, 9:29 pm)

Very nice collections and also very helpful for designers……..
93.

alexian (May 4th, 2008, 6:35 pm)

I love you more than i can do
94.

Grag (May 19th, 2008, 11:03 am)

Perfect Link [flash-menu.net]
It’s online builder. You can create drop down or accordion menus or download component.
95.

snoopi (May 27th, 2008, 1:35 pm)

hi,
how can we use these theme?
I would like a theme like the site “guide de prague”.
96.

turizm (June 4th, 2008, 7:09 am)

thank you…
97.

otogaz (June 11th, 2008, 5:10 am)

thanks you
98.

asansör (June 13th, 2008, 12:31 am)

thank you wery much
99.

Gaby (June 13th, 2008, 7:17 am)

Uhh… “mystery meat navigation”… menu options with sound effects.. I remember using those back in the 90s (and dropping them really fast)
Excellent list, as usual, thanx!
100.

Rob (June 17th, 2008, 9:42 pm)

I hate vertical type. People read left to right, not up and down so i find this approach to navigation a little dodgey. Makes you want to tilt your head to the left so you can read it properly. I don’t foresee me ever using vertical type on anything. I think it is the worst thing ever.
101.

Arjun (June 29th, 2008, 11:10 am)

I never seen this kind of navigation menu!
very very nice…
thanks for it.
102.

pesimist (July 29th, 2008, 11:24 am)

buttons is very nice :D
103.

number 08 (August 8th, 2008, 2:23 am)

Many thanks for sharing. i really needed some inspiration for navigation design so thanks!
104.

Marilyn (August 25th, 2008, 3:13 am)

This is such a wonderful article, thanks for all the examples you’ve provided. Some of them are really beautiful :)

Link [www.ovocreatives.com]
105.

Tammy Hart (September 7th, 2008, 8:06 am)

Doe anyone know of a way in WordPress to dynamically create a page list like what is shown in the first trend? I know I could use a custom field to create the subtitle, the problem is then listing it and the page title with a custom query.
106.

masterza (September 22nd, 2008, 7:49 pm)

excellent compilation of thanks
107.

Lever (October 2nd, 2008, 6:29 am)

That’s a really nice list, thank you :) It’s just a shame that the gotocss3.com site is no more - I really love that menu design and wanted to see more :(
108.

Vaishakh (October 12th, 2008, 9:12 pm)

it is realy great designs on this site…… this is very helpfull site for web designers…iam a web designer so i am very happy now ! thank you “SMASHINMAGAZINE”….
109.

Sadie (November 23rd, 2008, 7:48 pm)

Your screenshots are not showing.
110.

EMC (November 26th, 2008, 11:16 pm)

Very interesting subject
111.

andrew (December 1st, 2008, 3:33 am)

>while it’s cool, NickAd’s site navigation raises my anxiety levels.

My experience exactly. Frightening really. And the bass throb made me too anxious to actually keep navigating further!

As to this page as a whole with examples: a nice collection of work and helped with a little (well somewhat large) problem I had on a present project. Thanks for the effort in compiling all of these - must’ve taken quite some time! :)
112.

Ali TOPALOGLU (January 2nd, 2009, 3:17 am)

Cool collections, thanks.
113.

Kelly (January 20th, 2009, 11:33 pm)

Cool
114.

Relax (January 21st, 2009, 5:15 am)

This article is really amazing! Well structured and a true source of inspiration for every web design! I use it for my day to day design. Thanks!
115.

omar no sleep till brooklyn (January 21st, 2009, 9:43 pm)

This is truly exceptional inspiration and all around great work! Thank you so much for the work you put into this Smashing Magazine!
116.

Alan (January 22nd, 2009, 6:40 am)

Thanks for presenting this intriguing collection!
117.

andi candy (January 22nd, 2009, 10:25 pm)

i am so impressed with your site and all the collections your bring to this site. Thank you so much for inspiring me with your hard work.
118.

miln (January 25th, 2009, 7:36 pm)

another sample for the ‘creative / icon’ navigation. I think it works really well. intuitive.
Link [boxmodel.ca]
take a look.
119.

bolix (February 10th, 2009, 8:56 pm)

nice thanks!
120.

azad (March 28th, 2009, 9:21 am)

Cool Ideas. Great for inspiration. I visit this page everytime I design a navigation menu.
121.

Jofcar (April 6th, 2009, 5:47 am)

Hi there, does anyone know a good tutorial for speaking buttons navigation? I have tried it with only text and css but when going mouseover it won’t highlight the full button, only for example “home” and not the subtext.

I have seen quite cool navigation menu’s but I good tutorial for such speaking navigation menu’s is hard to find…
122.

cahura (June 2nd, 2009, 4:29 pm)

This certainly is timely for. For a little while now, I had been on the look out for navigation inspiration - Viola, this turns up!
123.

veru (June 12th, 2009, 4:39 am)

Really nice collection! Thanks.
124.

Yogesh (June 24th, 2009, 10:28 pm)

This is excellent work..
Thanks
125.

hansa (June 26th, 2009, 9:55 am)

Great list. Small typo in Polkdesign entry: calendear