For all the clean and minimalist designs out there are sites that evoke a dark, brooding, adventurous mood with illustrations, light, and even sound. The ones featured below also carry that noir, vintage feel.
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I love the clever touches used to frame certain content, like the smoke from the barrel of the rifle as background for “free shipping” and a blimp as background for the search bar. Even the lightbox for images has an ornate frame with proper branding—makes you wonder why sites don’t do this more often. I would have loved for the animations to be native HTML5 instead of Flash, but they are fun touches nonetheless.
Instead of scrolling down, you go “up the stairs” and view creepy movie posters under flickering lights. When the page loses focus, the current section is rotated and zoomed out a bit, then rights itself when you return to it. The shuddering hover animations on the links and social buttons are also a treat.
Illustrations here are a tad less intimdating but have a great visual style as well. Super clever are the hanging portraits of social media sites as gangsters with their own edgy nicknames.
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