40 Excellent Illustrations In Web Designs
In website design, there are an endless amount of possibilities, styles and techniques that can be used to make a beautiful design that flows with the content. One of these styles is an illustration-heavy layout, which can take a website to a whole new level. Illustrations are becoming more and more popular, and some designers are really pushing the limits with some beautiful ones.
Below you’ll find 40 designs that feature skillful and beautiful illustrations, integrated properly to create a visually pleasing style.
Also consider our previous articles:
- Web Design Trends 2009
A review of trends and popular design elements for 2009. - Retro and Vintage in Modern Web Design
- 50 Beautiful And Creative Portfolio Designs
- Textures in Modern Web Design
A great showcase of websites that have unique and creative textures. - 50 Beautiful Blog Designs
Beautiful Illustrations In Web Designs
DivVoted
An all-around beautiful layout, with some beautifully colored illustrations to accompany it.
The Alamo Basement
A nice, colorful illustration that has a comforting air.
StrawPoll
StrawPoll has a beautifully illustrated landscape, with an extremely clever layout.
Green Globe Ideas
A high-quality and very creative illustration in the header.
old loft
A very nicely illustrated layout, with good coloring and contrast.
Pixele
Pixele has a colorful and rather funky header that works well with the rest of the website.
Radu Ceuca
Another very colorful and grungy layout, with a painted effect.
ten24 Media
A beautiful yet simple illustration that looks excellent against the brown background.
Silverback
A very skillful and detailed illustration on a nice green layout.
Banjax
A simple but powerful illustration in the header, amidst a minimalist layout.
Neweracaptalk
A unique, flowing illustration that doesn’t detract from the content.
Dean Oakley
This is a great portfolio with a very creative horizontal layout. The illustration looks very nice with the layout.
K4 Laboratory
A very colorful illustration mixed with interesting moving Flash objects and some cool effects.
Visit Cascadia
A very detailed header background illustration.
Galan
A beautiful and brightly colored portfolio, with nice hand-drawn illustrations.
Branded07
A very clean website with some blue minimalist illustrations and really cool penguins.
WP Coder
A very clever design with a nice, detailed, semi-realistic illustrated machine.
Africa Tour 2008
An excellent mixture of grunge and clean styling.
45royale Inc.
Another elegant header design that looks great with the clean layout of the rest of the website.
Fatburgr
A few skillful illustrations in a very cool overall layout.
Drink ZZZ
This Flash website uses grungy illustrations and smart Flash effects to create a fun user experience.
Ali Felski
Another website with grungy textures and fancy colors.
DrupalCon DC
A colorful background graphic with a unique style.
LightCMS
The LightCMS website is known for its awesome coloring, textures and graphics.
Sourcebits TangledDecals
A very beautiful website, with colorful illustrations across the background, great type and grungy graphics.
GoMediaZine
A nicely detailed and colorful illustration the doesn’t detract from the content. This is also a good example of how colorful shapes can be mixed with black and white graphics.
STUDIO7DESIGNS
One more very popular website, because of the breathtaking background illustration.
Phizz
A mainly black and white illustration mixed into a colorful website.
answerJam
A very colorful minimalist website with simple shapes for illustrations.
Adit Shukla
A cool illustration that uses many different shapes but not too many colors, thus achieving a perfect balance.
Iceberg
Nice shapes and beautiful blue colors create a flowing design.
Marchand de Trucs
A quite stunning and extremely realistic illustration.
Erguvan Platin Evlri
A stylish watercolor background and a realistic illustration with interactive features.
Starbucks
Hand-drawn and illustrated graphics in a beautiful Flash-based layout.
Viget Extend
A colorful and creative header illustration.
Vimeo
A few simple graphics on a peaceful blue background.
Go Glamping
A cool layout with distinctive shapes and good color scheme.
Twither
Subtle cloud illustrations on a nice layout, with a great landscape illustration in the footer.
IL FRUTTETO
Simple shapes, great colors and gradients combine to make a completely illustrated website.
Umbrella Today?
Very realistic and detailed graphics with a great background design.
Further Resources
You may be interested in checking out these further articles and related resources:
- Web Design: Illustration
An inspirational resource full of illustrated websites; worth checking out.
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DKumar M.
February 19th, 2009 3:38 pmNice one…. I personally a big fan of using Illustrations into modern designs. Although it’s not to easy to create these type of Illustrations in general but it all depends upon the priority level.
Thanks Matt for this selection.
DKumar M.
Brian Gottier
February 19th, 2009 3:42 pmSome of this stuff seems recycled from other SM articles, but I like that Alamo Basement Illustration.
Ben Debnam
February 19th, 2009 3:57 pmA very inspiring list as always. Thank you for listing WPCoder, I really enjoyed working with WPCandy on that project.
Nick
February 19th, 2009 4:29 pmWhat’s up with the ugly, aliased Windows font rendering in all your screenshots? It really takes a way from a lot of the cool designs you post.
Eli
February 19th, 2009 4:37 pmExcellent examples. Thanks for the inspiring roundup :)
Brian Herbert
February 19th, 2009 4:42 pmI hate being “that guy” who points out something left off the list but the little illustration on http://ushahidi.com/ is quite nice.
WillxD
February 19th, 2009 4:52 pmvery inspiring illustrations.
sergi
February 19th, 2009 5:04 pman inspiring list. i’ve always liked vimeo’s. and now i’m a fan of twither (those moving clouds rock)(and did you notice you can’t right click on them – does that mean they are not flash?) and dean oakley.
Jonners
February 19th, 2009 5:05 pmThose are puffins, not penguins on Rob Palmer’s site ;)
Otherwise, very nice piece and rather inspirational designs :)
ChiefWakambi
February 19th, 2009 5:11 pmI love cartoons and I like this kind of illustration. My daughter and son love it too. Technically I know how to do it but to come up with a creative idea, I’m blank at this point. I’m a System guy but I like creative things.
Matt Cronin
February 19th, 2009 5:17 pm@ sergi
Twither does in fact use an embed flash object to create the cloud movement.
@ Jonners
Sorry, I’m a designer not a zoologist! I wouldn’t know the difference :)
Floris Fiedeldij Dop
February 19th, 2009 5:23 pmMacHeist web site is always gorgeous – graphic wise.
Simon Harlinghausen
February 19th, 2009 5:28 pmI love this article.
david
February 19th, 2009 5:59 pmso apparently you have to illustrate in vector to be “excellent”
Casting
February 19th, 2009 6:28 pmI like those
Josh
February 19th, 2009 6:30 pmWanna know a secret? Go to the Silverback site and resize the window horizontally. You’ll see the vines move in perspective.
Gis
February 19th, 2009 7:08 pmWhat a wonderful selection, and great source of inspiration :D
Take care guys!
Kim
February 19th, 2009 7:24 pmI dunno, speaking as an illustrator I have really mixed feelings about this post. On one hand, it’s awesome to see illustration get some recognition, especially as used in web design where it’s not as commonly seen. On the other hand, the similarity in style here is depressing. I know vector illustration is the big thing with web 2.0 style, but after a while it all starts to look the same to me. There are a few examples that don’t fit the norm, but overall there’s a lot of sameness here. Throwing a texture on a vector illustration may make it a bit grunge, but it doesn’t make it look natural. Some different styles would be awesome to see, and if there not out there, well… maybe they should be.
Mar
February 19th, 2009 10:05 pmReally rich websites being showcased here. Extremely mesmerising and informative. Thumbs up for the listing!
Sandie Sørensen
February 20th, 2009 12:18 amNice examples
Radu Ceuca
February 20th, 2009 12:21 amThanks for the feature guys! :)
jean-marc
February 20th, 2009 12:45 amSo inspiring!
Quakeulf
February 20th, 2009 1:03 amAs great as many of these designs are I can’t shake off the feeling that they are designing “learn how to read”-books for children and not a-ok sites adults. It’s like the dreaded kindergarten-like Windows XP’s theme all over again. It’s so cute and cuddly and childish in all the wrong ways, like Vimeo, Twither (lol title), IL FRUTTETO, old loft and many others.
Design needs to grow up here IMHO.
Radu Ceuca on the other hand, manages to avoid this and still stay fresh. Look at what he is doing if you want inspiration from this article. :3
MATHIZ
February 20th, 2009 1:11 amsorry guys I’m a big fan of SM but almost all of these webiste already featured on your website…….. maybe it’s time to find some new websites
Luke's Beard
February 20th, 2009 1:20 amI love this stuff , thanks :)
Ozbon
February 20th, 2009 1:28 amJust for future reference, the cool “penguins” in the design for Branded07 are actually puffins.
Close, but no cigar…
liebesiech
February 20th, 2009 1:40 amArghhhh, why I’m not talented enough to create such beautiful stuff! Anyway, like it!
jurica
February 20th, 2009 1:56 amPoor & recycled
Alok Jain
February 20th, 2009 2:00 amWhy most of your articles keep repeating same designs?
Quakeulf
February 20th, 2009 2:05 amAlok Jain:
Because it’s colonthree-time! :3
Creamy CSS
February 20th, 2009 2:49 amAll those illustrations can make any website really nice and creative, wonderful collection!
StaticVoid
February 20th, 2009 4:47 amBeautiful, just beautiful
dram
February 20th, 2009 4:53 amHey, thanks for featuring our work (NewEraCapTalk)! Greetings from e1k!
Gary H
February 20th, 2009 6:05 amMany of these won’t have universal appeal, especially of you’re already a designer or illustrator, but that’s more a matter of personal taste than anything.
You may want to reconsider the compulsion to write a caption for every sample included as it may not be necessary to explain what’s probably quite obvious to the viewer already. Let the visuals speak for themselves.
Biffy
February 20th, 2009 6:53 amI’d love to use some images like these for my website.
Is there a place with ready-made ones available (preferably free :D)?
Alternatively, are there any decent tutorials for creating images like that? I can create a simple web design but I wouldn’t know where to start with something like that without doing some tutorials first.
Timothy
February 20th, 2009 7:13 amNice list! I especially like the sheep wearing a rocket pack…
serinfather
February 20th, 2009 7:24 amGooooooood! design!
IndyIllustrator
February 20th, 2009 8:50 amProps to the few sites listed here that actually allowed their illustrations to determine the layout of the site. All too often these days, everything is web 2.0 CMS, with graphics thrown in and around a template or theme.
Drewster
February 20th, 2009 9:01 amI can’t help myself:
They aren’t penguins but are called Pufins, just so you know…
Tom
February 20th, 2009 9:34 amWow! Some really amazing illustrations – just wish I had the time to something like this in my work!
Fiachra
February 20th, 2009 9:57 amGreat post, and many really beautiful sites. Well done.
One small point of fact – I think that the “really cool penguins”… are actually puffins. :-)
ron evans
February 20th, 2009 10:58 amTo echo another poster: -> so excellent illustration means a lot of vector-ish web 2.0 Illustrations?
Is there any other style out there? Same thing with the grunge… the grunge pages are like web 2.0′s gothic twin sister…
Yawn!
JohnnyC
February 20th, 2009 11:21 amNOT PENGuIN, PUFFIn
Jessica
February 20th, 2009 1:23 pmRon Evans: “grunge pages are like web 2.0’s gothic twin sister…”
Quote of the Year…. lol
Quakeulf
February 20th, 2009 1:38 pm“Let the visuals speak for themselves.”
THIS.
/thread
Jeff Finley
February 20th, 2009 5:55 pmThanks for giving the Go Mediazine a shout in this list. Very greatful!
Rodrigo Motta
February 21st, 2009 5:45 pmI love Smashing Magazine. I need a Smashing Magazine t-shirt.
TechWiz
February 21st, 2009 7:19 pmGood to see DivVoted at the top. Have always loved that site!
waqas
February 22nd, 2009 4:16 amGreat post…!
Jamal
February 22nd, 2009 9:29 pmKool illustrations here’s one more http://www.boo-r-woo.com inspired from vimeo
Karl Francisco Fernandes
February 22nd, 2009 11:38 pmI personally love Nick La’s n design studio… Great phoenix illustration at the top… You have to check it out…
oGereye
February 23rd, 2009 2:50 amCan it be that u always show the same sites? i mean they are good, but they are also well known. Look for some new stuff :)
Dave Berzack
February 23rd, 2009 6:45 amMost of these are really cool illustrations, but don’t take advantage of the animation or interactive possibilities of the medium. Here’s a couple sites with cool illustrations that are more dynamic:
http://www.thinkbrighthouse.com
http://www.sweetwaterbrew.com
http://www.mcbd.co.uk/
The first two were designed by Toolbox9. The third was designed by MCBD
Petros Dimitriadis
February 24th, 2009 8:14 amThank you for the add guys!
Aamir Afridi
February 24th, 2009 9:33 amI really love most of them but K4 Laboratory impressed me
himanshu
February 24th, 2009 4:37 pmthis is a complete package for a startup,but i also want to say apart of this web designing, developers should explore a software called Adobe AIR,which will turn out to be boon for developers.
Rory Martin
February 25th, 2009 2:55 amThere are some fantastic sites here, really inspirational.
I love seeing illustrations used in websites, think they bring a lovely texture and feel to the screen.
Particularly like the Starbucks site, very nice flash interface with a good use of sound.
Adit Shukla’s landscape is pretty sweet too…
Keep up the good work!
karla
February 25th, 2009 12:39 pmvery beautiful collection. some of them at least :)
check out http://myft.net, a page designed as a book with a lot of illustration!
Brant Schroeder
February 25th, 2009 12:51 pmGreat Post
I love viewing what others are up to.
Alberto Villalobos Solano
February 25th, 2009 10:32 pmNice, its inspiring, cause lately i am using illustrations in my web design. even my own website has , you can wiew if you want!!
web design group
February 26th, 2009 1:06 amvery beautiful collection.
Content Writing Advice
February 26th, 2009 8:06 amGreat post. I personally like how Vimeo is designed, simple and clean.
KooWii
February 28th, 2009 2:25 amNice illustrations. What I like the most is the K4 Laboratory. It is really eye catching. I hope one day I will be able to create such beautiful and catchy header for my own blog.
Marc Kuiper
March 2nd, 2009 2:41 pmNice list!!
Travolta, John
March 5th, 2009 12:42 pmBullshit. No one is W3C valid.
Juank
April 12th, 2010 2:43 pmcheck this one out: http://www.fuseboxcreations.com. It is beautifully illustrated and validates perfectly.
Brian
April 28th, 2009 7:56 pmNice list. I really like Marchand de Trucs.
How about one more? Kinetic Shadows
talllal
August 6th, 2009 10:25 pmشات الود
الود
Kyle
May 6th, 2011 7:12 amvery very cool! Thanks 4 list!
Graphismeo
May 13th, 2012 10:53 pmThat’s a realy cool ressource for inspiration. Illustration in web design is so great that I wrote an article about it on my blog : graphismeo.com/ressources/illustration-webdesign-ressources-tutoriaux