10 Inspired Design Studio Websites That Do Things Differently

When you're in the business of imagination, your agency website needs to communicate your creative spirit.

Design studios combine creativity with marketing savvy. Expected to use cutting-edge technology and skills to produce stand-out creative, they’re treated as artistic influencers and original thinkers—helping to push design forward and shape trends on the web.

This puts tremendous pressure on design studios’ own websites. Prospective clients want to quickly see that studios can create solutions that meet business goals marked with a distinct visual identity.

To show clients that you’re capable of groundbreaking work, your own website needs to be equally as groundbreaking. We’ve pulled together a small selection of striking design studio websites to give you an idea of how other top-caliber creatives are facing the challenge.

What Makes a Stand-Out Design Studio Website?

Above all, the best design studio websites make an impression. The visual aesthetic, layout, UI, UX, typography, and writing all work together in making it clear who an agency is, and the type of work they produce. People can recognize right away what makes them unique, and how they approach design.

While there is no “correct” way to structure a design studio website, most involve a few basics: a values- and personality-driven opener; a demonstration of how the studio creatively solves problems; and a user experience that effortlessly guides prospective clients to explore all content and get in touch.

Popular Design Studio Website Trends

Design studio websites need to be something more than the well-trodden format of about, work, and contact. Offering interactive 3D worlds, using restraint through minimalism, blowing up the user experience through maximalism, or putting together a concise one-page website are all ways of reinventing the form.

Having a distinct brand voice that rises above the collective din of agencies all offering the same types of creative services also matters. Loud and direct copy is a bit of a design agency trope, which isn’t necessarily bad, but agencies who are able to project their distinct personalities through the words they choose can stand out from the crowd.

There isn’t one way to build an agency website. Some let the design function as a backdrop, with the projects that are featured speaking to their skills. Others take a typographically focused approach, with text playing a major part in communicating the work of their agency.

Design studio websites tend to fall into two distinct categories. Some are purpose-driven, using a variety of content in telling their stories. Often they’ll contain detailed case studies laying out the goals, steps, and challenges that went into the design process. Others are work- or project-driven, letting their creative output speak for itself through visuals of what they’ve done, along with a small amount of context.

10 Bold Design Studio Websites

Design studio websites need to offer something unique that defines who your creatives are. Let’s look at 10 design studio websites that all take very different approaches in showcasing their work and communicating who they are.

Amadeo

Built with Vev, Amadeo packs their design with action. The first thing you see is an image carousel that flips through shots of products they have worked on. Just a short scroll down and you’ll see an embedded video reel that shows off more of their creative work. Amadeo further takes advantage of Vev’s pre-coded design components with effects like scroll zoom that enlarges project images as you scroll down.

Amadeo stands out from so many design studio websites with a design full of dynamic text and visuals that fills it with energy and excitement.

Habitat

Though horizontal scrolling has become more well-known, we’re always pleasantly surprised when we come across a website using it. Habitat, a Swiss design firm, begins with a side-scrolling journey through who they are, and the type of work that they do.

This horizontal space is filled with animated text and visuals, video clips, and shifting background colors. Habitat embraces Swiss design, with contrasting sizes of sans serif type used throughout this space. Visuals, text, and images, come together for a design that feels artistic and modern.

Simon

For those unfamiliar, computational design utilizes computers in deploying algorithms and utilizing data in guiding the design process, with code generated for every action taken. Simon specializes in this field and this website works so well in showing how code and design can intersect.

Much of this was put together using Svelte, an open source component framework for building interactive user interfaces. Introduced only five years ago it works by generating lightweight JavaScript, giving it a speed advantage over heavier applications like Vue or React.

This design is unique, while still being easy to navigate. From the opening screen with its two gigantic buttons that flash different words associated with computational design to the accordion-like interface of the projects Simon has worked on, it doesn’t feel like a run-of-the-mill agency website.

BBDO

BBDO, a German creative agency, fills its website with visual brilliance. With a bold and wild color palette of pink, purple, and yellow, horizontally scrolled sections, text in motion, and snappy microinteractions, this design wows you the moment you land on it, and never lets up.

We love seeing design studio websites that aren’t afraid to indulge in experimentation, and BBDO succeeds with a flashy yet highly usable design.

Neverland

Neverland begins with a 3D graphic of a pink entrance. Just beyond the periphery, a stack of colorful objects awaits. Scrolling guides you through this mysterious portal, into the main body of Neverland’s website. We’re fans of design studio websites that aren’t afraid to break boundaries and Neverland succeeds with this quirky 3D space.

This is a one-pager but feels like so much more. Throughout there are detailed 3D graphics, made with Blender, that give it a sense of depth and space. This design goes beyond being a mere flat one-page design, offering an immersive and eclectic space.

Index

One of the main objectives for design studio websites is making sure that work gets seen as quickly as possible. Index puts their best work first, with a scroll-triggered series of projects that take up the entire screen, with a call to action to view the case study they’ve put together about it.

This design has a mix of different web design techniques, that are all done tastefully. With touches of minimalism, parallax scrolling windows that reveal text, and huge colorful examples of their work, this design manages to find just the right balance between refinement and movement.

Blackmotion

Hitting the opening enter button puts you on a hyperspeed flight through a pink ethereal landscape. It feels like traveling through a wormhole to a different dimension, shuttling you to the main body of Black Motion’s website.

3D visuals and interactivity make this a mind-bending and immersive user experience. There are many ways to build out surreal worlds like this, with WebGL, GSAP Animation, and Three.js being a few of the tools that went into designing this.

Creating something memorable means going beyond the bare minimum. Black Motion invents its own style of design, with this strange and hypnotic web space.

Tofu

With a white background and black text Tofu leaves plenty of room for their work to shine through in full color. Though this design may appear simple, there are plenty of subtle nuances. There’s a clever hover effect that shifts each project like it’s a piece of elastic. You’ll encounter other subtle effects like text and images that fade in, as well as zoom on scroll.

With a clean layout, colorful illustrations, and plenty of personality Tofu delivers a user experience that makes seeing their work and knowing who they are instantaneous and easy.

Watch This Space Agency

Watch this Space Agency begins with a video clip depicting two astronauts strolling across the lunar surface, staring at the Earth in the distance. The theme of outer space can be seen throughout, with deep blues, visuals of Earth, and animated touches like a planet and space shuttle that float across the screen while scrolling through.

The best design studio websites tend to have something conceptual that connects everything together. Space travel ties right in with the name of their agency, and this stylistic choice makes for a fun trajectory in learning more about Watch this Space’s design work.

Serendipity

With paper-like textures, touches of tape and paint, along with an emerald green color scheme, Serendipity has a calm and organic sensibility. There’s a sense of depth, with visuals layered on top of each other, as well as shift in light and shadow. It has a natural feel, that looks like you could reach out and touch what’s on the screen. Along with a sense of physicality, there are time-delayed images and text that show up as you scroll. They’re rolled out in gentle succession, which further adds to the patient and tranquil user experience.

Create a Unique Design Studio Website

Tired of looking for the right platform to realize your idea? We created Vev to give professional design teams complete technical and creative freedom of expression. Craft a striking website using our pre-coded elements, effects, animations for a fraction of the time and cost of coding it from scratch. Then publish anywhere on the web when you’re ready—including to an existing website domain.