Big Header – The Power of beautiful web design – Showcase of the best 20

by Lam Nguyen on Oct 21
59 Comments

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The first look of web design, of course, is the header. Your website header is the most important part in your design. You can see around the web, most of designers always spend more time to make up their header (not their hair !!!). The more beautiful your web design header is, the more attractive your web site in your visitors look.

In this showcase, you will see how 20 the best websites design their header with a big head. Furthermore, you will understand why they are the best.

Sunrise Design

Why?: The big head with grunge background is awesome. One more thing is attractive is the fog animation.

Creativa Unlimited

Why?: There are a lot of hand made embroidered fabrics in the background. Good combining colors and messing up the stuffs.

Bug Interactive

Why?: Widescreen city background with nice cloud. That is simple and lightly. This header is flexible.

Clark Studios

Why?: It is a cute cartoon background and good drawing. The menu in the header is dark, so it sets off the header background.

GetMeFast

Why?: Awesome cartoon drawing. However, this website’s designer should re-design their website body. Furthermore, the menu and the tooltips are not mixed with the header, but it is really awesome cartoon header.

Spoon Graphics

Why?: Chris Spooner designed a lot of awesome works, and his homepage is one of them. This header describes clearly his works.

Envato

Why?: Everyone has decided that Evato design rocks and totally mind blowing.

Alexandra Tong Blog

Why?: This one is not good to describe yourself but really attractive with beautiful beach background and cool animation background.

Ten 24 Media

Why?: Simple with the big head but it is nice idea for the image. It should be changed the text because it’s good for typography, but this one did not do well.

Veboo Labs

Why?: Very clearly about their work and awesome vector drawing.

Work Awesome

Why?: The logo is simple but very nice. There are a lot of stuffs for web designers here. The most interesting thing is the keyboard with Evato brand name.

Michael Coyle Blog

Why?: Great illustration. It make visitors feel friendly and very elegant.

All For Design

Why?: The logo is strong. The colors in background were dissected very interesting. It is a nice idea.

You Love Us

Why?: It was designed with a sexy background like Mac style. Awesome animated background. Don’t forget to check its footer too.

Design-Studio Simple.Art

Why?: It looks similar to Work Awesome about the idea. It is a modern style with nice jQuery implement.

Scandinavian

Why?: Colorful background and cool typography.

Julian Diego Velasco

Why?: Cool wood fence, beautiful coloration, and the good idea.

Lebloe

Why?: Most of visitors love colorful design. And this one is one of the bests with cool blending background.

DivVoted

Why?: It is a beautiful cloud with cute flying objects.

Blogmetender

Why?: Cool widescreen cloud background with pencil drawing objects.

What do you think?

That’s all of the best in some evaluations, but it maybe weird in your opinion. Why don’t you tell us about yours thinking. What is the best big header style of a website?

Author: Lam Nguyen

I'm Lam Nguyen, a 21 year old web developer writing about everything related to web design. I am owner of AEXT.NET and WhoFreelance.com Web Community News. You can catch me on twitter.

Posted in: Inspiration
Tags: Web Design, web header, websites showcase

59 User Comments

Gopal Raju 21. Oct, 2009 at 9:46 pm #

Nice round up!

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Nathan 22. Oct, 2009 at 1:40 am #

Great list

I think I like the Simple Art one the most.

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Michael Oeser 22. Oct, 2009 at 2:02 am #

Nice but I´m missing for example http://www.studiopress.com and of course my own http://www.michaeloeser.de

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- Lam Nguyen 22. Oct, 2009 at 2:25 am #
  
  @Michael They’re both good design, Michael! Nice addition!
  @Nathan Thanks, I believe so . @Gopal Raju Thanks for the first
  
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Webstandard-Team 22. Oct, 2009 at 3:31 am #

Very nice collection, but don’t miss the following Website-Headers because of their Parallax-Effect!

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Ben Hunt 22. Oct, 2009 at 3:35 am #

I love them, they’re great Art, but don’t let’s all go out and do this on our web sites.

The major problem is if you have the same bigass header on every page of your site. If you repeat a huge chunk of Art on each page, all you’re doing is bumping your Content down – on every view, which is Grade “A” Industrial Strength Bad News for your visitors and your conversion rate.

Only use these massive headers if you really need to sell people on the quality of your art, or you need to make a big and (slightly) unusual impact on the first view. But you’ll need to design another version for your content, which is more work.

I’d suggest: Why not have the art as content, rather than background, and avoid the problem altogether?

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David 22. Oct, 2009 at 4:08 am #

here is my big header: http://www.davidhellmann.com

big headers and footer are so wonderful!

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comeinin 22. Oct, 2009 at 4:22 am #

Maybe like this?

http://truskawka.pl/

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Irimia 22. Oct, 2009 at 5:47 am #

Hmm … but Vebo seems to have the same design as http://www.scriptmatix.com/ or Scriptmatrix as Vebo … i don’t know.

Anyway, all of them looks pretty good

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Ted Goas 22. Oct, 2009 at 8:05 am #

Nice roundup, thought this post might be called “Big ILLUSTRATED Headers.”

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All for Design 22. Oct, 2009 at 8:52 am #

Hi here,

thanks a lot for the feature

It’s very strange because I didn’t knew your blog until I saw it yesterday afternoon (pure hazard).
As I found the content very inspirating I have added it to my Symbaloo Coding public page. [Link : http://www.symbaloo.com/public/2919/coding/

So… When I have saw yesterday evening that you have featured my blog header… I found it absolutely fun.
What a coincidence ! I like it

If you want the adresses of more symbaloo public spaces, just ask me (Webdesign / Graphic Design / Magazine / Tutorials / FlickR Groups etc…)

Congrats for your blog !

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Shane 22. Oct, 2009 at 10:26 am #

Nice collection, Really like the blogmetender website.
Thanks for sharing.

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Lam Nguyen 22. Oct, 2009 at 11:20 am #

@Ted Goas uhmmm… yeah, right, but I want to attracts people by the title

@Irimia: Maybe they’re using the same company to design their layout. Or maybe one of them stole other design. Not sure ….

@David: Yours is good.. I like it!

@comeinin : Wow, that’s taste . Nice addition. Thanks!

Thanks for your interesting…

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Greg 22. Oct, 2009 at 12:11 pm #

Love the Article though I have one question:

Big Head or Fat Foot?

I’ve been trying to decide which works best in what applications (ie Blog, eComm, Agency, News etc)
Any one have thoughts?

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Lam Nguyen 22. Oct, 2009 at 12:18 pm #

@All for Design Your comment was marked as spam, haha, so funny huh? Sorry about that ^^
Thanks for the adding. Glad to see you!

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MArty Sull,ens 22. Oct, 2009 at 12:37 pm #

All of these are great, Its impressive to see what is possible on the web these days because of faster bandwidth and computers.

Headers like these would have taken forever to load just 5-6 years ago and would not have been piratical.

Thanks technology!

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Lam Nguyen 22. Oct, 2009 at 1:01 pm #

@Greg: They are both important to any design … Your comment give me another idea of another post with a cool title: “Big Head or Fat Foot ???”. If I’m gonna post new entry with this title, I will mention your name as the suggestion Thanks

@MArty Sull,ens: Yup, that’s right! Last 5-6 years ago, I hated to load webpages that had big images. But it’s fine now.

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legs 22. Oct, 2009 at 4:05 pm #

lovely article, lovely site.

I just have an issue with the fact you look about 12 years old!

Great job!

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- Lam Nguyen 22. Oct, 2009 at 4:13 pm #
  
  @legs Hahaha, no no, I’m 22 years old. Anyway, thanks for decreasing my age to make me younger )
  
  Reply
Craig James 23. Oct, 2009 at 6:25 am #

Nice feature

Got to love this internet thingity bobbity….. now even non web related retards like myself can put together something half decent. http://craig-james.com.au

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web design hertfordshire 23. Oct, 2009 at 10:17 pm #

Lovely. I would like to give my order for my site design to you.

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Osvaldo Я 24. Oct, 2009 at 1:13 am #

Exelentes designs!!!!!!!! me encantaron!!

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clippingimages 24. Oct, 2009 at 3:56 am #

Really awesome collection of few best design websites. These really inspired me. Some creative and smart design with website. Thanks for sharing this nice post.

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aceh 24. Oct, 2009 at 11:09 am #

amazing design…very full inspiration..thanks for the post

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Rob 24. Oct, 2009 at 4:19 pm #

Nice collection of designs, some really inspiring ones there.

Bit of advice though, possibly ask someone you know who speaks fluent english to proof read what you write first, some of it is bad english and I also felt like you were being a little sarcastic with comments, but I know you weren’t really:)

Keep up the good work.

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Lam Nguyen 24. Oct, 2009 at 5:12 pm #

@Rob: Yup, sometime, I don’t know how to say something in English. May some people thought it was a sarcasm. Thanks for the advices.

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Robin Cannon 26. Oct, 2009 at 8:38 am #

Nice showcase, there’s a lot of good header design out there.

“Your website header is the most important part in your design.”

I take issue with this comment though. A header is a pretty important part of a web page, but it’s in no way the most important. While it can provide a powerful first impression, the overall site design, navigation and of course content are ultimately going to be far more influential in both attracting and retaining visitors than a pretty header.

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Gary 27. Oct, 2009 at 4:40 am #

One thing young designers should be aware of regarding large headers is the impact they have on readers searching for the content. The basic rule of thumb here is that they work on the homepage, but not on content pages. The copy on inner pages should be as high up the page as possible as to help the visitor gain what they have visited for. Maybe a reduced header size or removing it all together on potentially long-tail hit pages.

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Keith Clark 28. Oct, 2009 at 4:56 am #

Nice set of designs. I love the vector / illustrative stuff – a style I used on my own website.

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Web Design Arizona 29. Oct, 2009 at 3:05 am #

This is really good designs.

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Anthony 29. Oct, 2009 at 9:14 am #

I love big header websites. They are so eye catching. Here is a link to my eye catching header

http://www.trewknowledge.com

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Arash 31. Oct, 2009 at 9:40 am #

Great overview

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Daniel 01. Nov, 2009 at 4:11 pm #

Big Headers are great. Fantastic examples here, even though I knew many of em already. My first attempts to create beautiful big headers can be found at http://www.strongtiger.com and http://www.oceanpub.de – still far from the ones you featured, but I’m working at it

BTW: Big Footers are very effective, too! Could be an idea for an article to come, couldn’t it?

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Lam Nguyen 01. Nov, 2009 at 5:21 pm #

@Daniel: Thanks for the positive comment. The idea you are mentioning that has been mention by the “Fat Foot”, cool huh?

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Daniel 01. Nov, 2009 at 6:22 pm #

Ouh, right. Didn’t read through all the comments – my fault. Yet it’s just a proof you should really consider writing about it

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Loffern 13. Nov, 2009 at 10:23 am #

Pretty nice collection. Sadly I still get customers who insist on making the entire website tight enough to fit in the view port. Any one else still getting these customers?

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