20 Best New Websites, September 2024

Welcome to this collection of what has been catching our eye on the web over the past month.

We have a mixed bag for you with both minimalist and maximalist designs, and single pagers alongside much bigger, but highly organized spreads. Menus are a focus of interest, with several of the sites featured finding ways to stand out in this area while maintaining clear, functional navigation. Enjoy!

Five Pathways

Five Pathways offers retirement financial planning. The site makes use of handcrafted illustrations, including vintage style hot air balloons and pointing hands, to create a friendly and trustworthy, non-corporate feel. The virtual office is a pleasing feature.

Intrepid Automation

The color scheme here is minimal, with pale greens providing softer backgrounds in chosen areas. The text color animations add dynamism, while the technical drawing style of illustration maintains the minimalist aesthetic.

Mooders

The homepage for Mooders sound design studio impresses with masked video swapping with background video of projects when the mouse passes over a project link. Throughout the rest of the site, the outlining of content blocks and clean type creates an uncluttered feel.

Cantina del Sol

A dark, rich red background dominates this site for the Mexican restaurant Cantina del Sol. Occasional large and bright illustrations and photographs provide contrast, while oversized type adds to the sense of drama.

1 Place Vendôme

1 Place Vendôme is a boutique hotel from the luxury jewellery brand Chopard. The website is more an experience than an information resource with its infinitely scrolling homepage displaying artfully presented images of the hotel’s interiors. Details on amenities are thin, but with rooms starting at €1400 a night, a certain amount probably goes without saying.

Superpower

Health platform Superpower’s website switches between app style rounded content blocks and fullscreen, dynamic visuals to match the change in content between product details and concept.

Zetr

Zetr produces high end electrical fittings, I.e. sockets and switches, which on paper doesn’t sound like the most exciting web project. Their site combines clarity of navigation with beautiful use case photography to create a pleasurable and positive user experience that exceeds expectations.

Gardener

This is about as basic as a website gets, but it still has a lot of style. The soft beige and cream color pairing is sophisticated, while the orange footer adds vitality. There is a lot of text content, but it is concise and informative with no fluff.

Unveil

This site for Unveil creative studio makes the project menu its central feature. Semi-transparent image ‘slides’ are presented on a scrolling loop, giving the impression of shuffling through physical objects. It is a pleasing effect back-up by dynamic filtering.

Dopefolk

DopeFolk is a subscription based web design agency. Their single page site takes a bold tone, and effectively presents their approach and service terms. Links to live sites take the place of portfolio images and case studies, allowing them to keep things simple.

Art-Toi

Art-Toi is bright and lively with lots of cheerful yellow and hand lettering. Composite images create a complementary narrative to the text, and the overall tone supports the product’s aim of demystifying art for the uninitiated.

Magnitude

This site for handmade beds blends artfully styled ‘lookbook’ photographs with a walkthrough on selecting components for a customized bed. The result is a pleasing and suitably relaxing experience.

KYI Gorilka

KYI Gorilka is a Ukrainian vodka branded primarily as a foundation ingredient for cocktails. The display type has an Art Deco feel that combined with the overall dark look of the site, creates a sense of sophistication and glamour.

Studio Size

Overall this site for creative agency Studio Size is a fairly standard studio portfolio site, with carefully curated images nicely spaced and strong clean type, but some added details make it memorable. In particular, the onhover video previews of social links, and the footer raises a smile.

Foam

Sticky header menus are nothing new, but this dropdown version is unusually appealing. It gives the impression of almost a post-it note folded up over the content. The bright red over the otherwise predominantly black and white scheme is pleasing too.

MakeMePlay

MakeMePlay is a game design and creation studio, and as might be expected, there is a lot of animation here. It is a colorful site, with a lot going on, but it never feels overbusy, and important information is clearly prioritized and presented.

DEF

Scrolling and text animations add a pleasing level of interest without interfering with the user’s focus on the content. It feels modern and very professional.

In Substance

Beautifully basic, but with high concept product photography, this furniture website imparts an air of quality and thoughtful design to the products featured.

Beisbol en Salt Lake

This single pager is essentially a poster. It’s bright and colorful with a positive feel that is entirely appropriate for advertising what is billed as a fun day out.

Stevia Please

Bright, sugar candy colors and bento-box style rounded boxes add quirkiness and personality to this showcase site for freelance motion designer Camille Frairrot. The work is displayed with a good amount of detail and includes a pretty impressive client list.

Paddi MacDonnell

Paddi MacDonnell is a designer and entrepreneur from Northern Ireland, follow her on Twitter.