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SHOWCASE
MADNESS
2019
SHOWCASE
MADNESS
2019
Welcome to our first annual Elementor website showcase, where we selected the ten best sites of the year out of 120 superb contenders!
- Matan Naveh
- December 24, 2019
- No Comments
Here at Elementor, we kinda like the yearly roundups. Why? Because we get to enjoy the best designs and get inspired all over again. So we decided to review one of our and the community’s favorite columns — the monthly showcase. Doing so meant choosing just 10 top Elementor sites, from over 120 superb contenders, which we reviewed over the past year.
Our showcase first appeared in June 2018. Since then, it’s become something of a tradition, generating anticipation at the beginning of every month. During 2019 alone, our users submitted more than 2,450 sites — that’s an average of over 200 sites every month, and that’s a lot of tough choices to make.
And where do these 120 sites that we showcased over the past year, come from? They hail from 30 different countries, spanning across 5 continents! It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that 34 of the 120 entries originate in the United States, given the size of the US market and the number of Elementor users there.
In the second place, with 14 entries, is Germany, followed by Israel with 13. Australia came in fourth place with 9 representatives, and Spain closes the first quintet with 7 finalists.
Selecting the top sites for 2019 was anything but simple. Our entire team of designers and myself spent hours discussing and, admittedly bickering a little (you know what they say, “opinions are like…”), but in the end, we came up with 10, one of which has received a double prize for also being selected by our lovely community, of course!
And so, the big question remains: Which site has the honor of being the number one Elementor website for 2019?
Scroll down to find out…
District Dogs
District Dogs is an American pet care company that provides premium services to mostly dogs and their owners in the Washington DC area.
More often than not, a fusion of too many visual elements might put a strain on the visitors’ eyes and distract them. Exceptionally, the designer of this website has managed to achieve this task heroically, and the result on the whole is nothing short of amazing.
The copy is excellent and simply explains what services they provide to the customer and their dogs. The illustrations and sketches of dogs and dog-related objects are just beautiful. This is the first time this designer has used Elementor — we can’t wait to see what comes next!
Design & Development: Stephen Lepsch – The Creative Industry
Sichtbar
A German branding agency, Sichtbar provides its customers with a variety of services, aimed to help them optimize their web presence using a variety of tools, channels, and marketing tools: web strategy, web design, social media, coaching, branding, and user experience.
The image they picked for the hero section simply nails it — and the use of humor only reinforces the message: “We are the best.” The overall design is quite minimalistic, clean, and simple, each icon has a clear statement, and the white, black, and yellow color palette gives it a striking look. The agency’s mission is to be highly professional; uses images of rocks from outer space to imply they can withstand any seemingly impossible client brief. The project pages are more colorful than the rest of the pages, yet they maintain the same design language.
Design & Development: Sichtbar
Münchner Science & Fiction Festival
Founded in 2014, Münchner Science & Fiction Festival is an interdisciplinary blend of art and science festival, merging fantasy and science fiction with art and science.
The hypnotizing design of this website conveys an outer space, alien-like atmosphere. When landing on the homepage, visitors are welcomed by a mysterious, eerie-looking locust, while floating particles in the background reminded us of Stranger Things’ first season.
The designer made an excellent choice with the fonts for the body text — thin and elongated, very suitable for the sci-fi themed layout. The Edward Gorey-inspired sketches correspond to the video and texts and are very “true” to the overall atmosphere of the site. It’s also worth mentioning the inward-tilting menu that demonstrates a great combination of creativity and functionality. Brilliant work!
Design: Dandy von Nützen & Ronit Wolf
Development: Dandy von Nützen
Sustainable Nation
Sustainable Nation is an Israeli new hour-long documentary, following three individuals who are doing their part to bring sustainable water solutions to an increasingly thirsty planet.
The promotional site has a different and interesting design. Built from scratch, the overall design of the image collage is simply excellent. The color palette works well with the pictures, and the fine typography, which is reminiscent of newspaper font, fits perfectly together. It’s fun to see how old print design is brought into the digital world. The composition of different newspaper clippings that creates a whole photo, is highly creative and inspiring. And, of course, it stays on topic with the subject of sustainability.
Design: JerusalemU
Tickle Bear Games
Tickle Bear Games’ website is a landing page/introductory portal and future Kickstarter campaign for their first project — a card game called “Somewhere Under the Rainbow.” It is a mobile-first design, while the desktop version playfully gives people the resizing guidelines to access the mobile version from their desktop.
The artwork is one of the key components of the game, so the website heavily focuses on the visual aspects. No doubt they took their concept to the edge, with Nickelodeon-style artwork depicting strange and amusing animals moving from scene to scene. This site has everything children and grownups look for in a game: it is entertaining, enticing and pure fun.
Design: Kiwook Nam and Konstantins Petkuns
Development: Lara Koller
X-Combat
X-Combat is a paintball and laser tag venue from Israel, offering participants a simulated warfare experience in a mock battlefield. Their website demonstrates the features of our Motion Effects to the fullest as if we had released it for them. Well, to be frank, the site’s theme is a perfect fit. Right from the start, on the welcome page where visitors choose between the paintball and the laser tag areas, they enter a 3D world, which the designer created using the mouse rotating effects.
A click on either one of the games leads visitors to a playful inner page that shows a sophisticated use of rotate, vertical, and horizontal scroll on different elements: images of soldiers, a laser beam shooting out of a rifle, a rotating hand grenade, bullets raining down and more. This is simply a fun experience and excellent, creative use of Elementor’s Motion Effects.
Design & Development: Genesis
Shira Leffel
Shira Leffel is an independent copywriter and content strategist from Germany, specializing in B2B & B2C high-tech startups.
The concept of copywriting is clear and consistent throughout Shira’s website, reflected in her minimalistic design approach. It starts with the hero section that features one concise sentence: “because copy matters.” Scrolling down reveals a magazine look with different visual elements borrowed from the text world — semi-colon, ampersand, quotation marks, and tilde — and painted in pink. This serves as a delicate decoration and breaks the general black and white layout. The designer also uses entrance animation effects to create a flow. Superb!
Design: Maia Darnell
Development: Eagleray Web
Ik Ben Onbetaalbaar
Ik Ben Onbetaalbaar is a one-page site depicting the hidden world behind prostitution in the Netherlands, using an interactive timeline. It is part of a campaign to criminalize the purchase of sex, which to date has collected more than 50,000 signatures.
The designer of this project created a timeline that simulates the process, from the moment a client buys sexual services from a prostitute to the resulting consequences. They used the different scrolling effects, as well as sticky scrolling to emphasize the transactional nature of the Dutch sex industry. The designer leads readers down the page, using visual elements to enable them to grasp the information quickly, and directing them to take action. Ingenious!
Design & Development: Kitemedia.nl
Ioana Ciolacu
Ioana Ciolacu is a contemporary womenswear fashion designer from Romania. You can see that much thought was invested in designing Ioana’s website. There is a smart combination of minimalism (layout) and complexity (fashion photography). The site frame is simple and boxed — a linear design language puts the focus on Ioana’s colorful fashion. The composition of texts and colors or images is carefully chosen and adds a dimension of storytelling.
Design & Development: Curated Square
Webicient
Webicient is a Swedish digital web agency focusing on web development, graphic design, and SEO.
The devil is in the details, right? Webicient’s website shows how incorporating amusing small visual and textual elements gives an extra edge to a page that at first glance appears simple. The inner portfolio pages are clean and informative, providing all the necessary details and paying proper attention to the agency’s work.
Webicient was selected by the Elementor community as the best site for 2019
Design & Development: Webicient
About the Author
Matan Naveh
Matan started his career as a Radio Broadcaster, he worked as a content manager and Editor-in-Chief for over 15 years. Matan enjoys psychological horror movies and 80's Chinese restaurants.
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