With 2021 just getting under way, it’s time to pick out the best web designs of 2020 – 2021.
To do that, here are the best websites around right now, bringing together the latest web design trends of 2021 and the best web design studios on the planet.
Across 12 picks we’ll walk through the good and the very best in graphic design until we find the best website of 2020 and 2021.
Put your helmet on — things are about to get serious.
Best web designs of 2020 and 2021
Badass35
A spectacular web design with a combination of elements that makes it worthy of a place among the best web designs of 2021.
What stands out is the extreme colour combination and the use of type as the main element.
And as if that weren’t enough, navigation is very smooth and every internal section has a character of its own.
Definitely a reference site for lovers of web design.
Le Cantiche
Marking the 700th anniversary of the Divine Comedy, this web design arrives to support the event and leave us open-mouthed.
The web design and development carry us into a web experience with no equal.
You can feel the use of the latest technologies and an excellent web design that lift it to a place on this list of the best web designs of 2020 and 2021.
BMS United
Another perfect example of top-tier web design and development.
Here we see a masterful use of several elements from our list of web design trends for 2021 and graphic design trends for 2021.
- The custom cursor
- The super burger menu
- The Hero Home
- Giant type
- High-contrast colours
- Asymmetric web design
- Smooth, dynamic navigation
- Hover effects
Definitely one of the best web designs of 2020 and 2021.
Spline Group
Another design that bears out our predictions about the web design trends of 2021.
An excellent design combining elements and ingredients that make it worthy of being the best web design of 2020 and 2021.
Note the side super burger menu that opens app-style, the giant type and the bold colour palette.
TWKS
This web design crosses every red line we set about letting graphic design studios into best-web-design lists, but the truth is it’s impossible to overlook.
The web design on this site is excellent and the development is right up there with it.
Take a look for yourselves and judge why it belongs among the best web designs of 2020 and 2021.
Space Force Design
This is another of the best web designs of 2021.
A design and build born out of creating a solid corporate identity with real character, dominated by a great colour palette and a brilliant typeface.
Above all I’d single out the «intro», subtle and smooth, and the way the burger menu appears.
Voice of Racism
This web design bursts onto the list on the strength of its experience and its interaction with the user, who will find it captivating.
Voice of Racism is a web experience that combines visual and audio elements perfectly.
The visual elements used are elegant and gentle, contrasting with the ultimate aim: to shake our social foundations.
Fledge TV
Another of the best web designs of 2020 and 2021 we’ll see for a long while.
A web design with a high-contrast colour palette dominated by giant type and asymmetric web design.
As if that weren’t enough, they’ve had the nerve and the cheek to use a central burger menu that greets us in a kind of hall.
The web design in pure Hero Home style is excellent.
Chiara Luzzana
I love this web design!
I have no words to describe this stroke of creative brilliance, but I do know what I want to highlight about the web design, and I invite you to take a look for yourselves.
- The drop-down burger menu.
- The organic quality of the web design
- How smoothly it navigates
- The use of typefaces combined in look and size
- The colour range
- The use of music as an optional and perfect element
For all this and much more it goes straight onto the podium of the best web designs of 2020-2021.
Go Pioneer
Another masterpiece of web design and development, a polished diamond made by true professionals.
This web design combines content and graphic devices brilliantly, making the user experience a hugely appealing immersion in sensation and knowledge.
Vertical scroll navigation combined with a full-screen drop-down burger menu and the use of graphics, video, 3D animation and giant type puts us in front of one of the best web designs of 2020 – 2021
KIKK.BE
Year after year this festival dresses itself in the best web design of the year.
Moving through its site we come across geometric elements, illustrations, exquisite interactions, type and copy that pull you in and, in short, we finish the journey wanting to start all over again and relive the experience.
Moon Safari Archi
With this web design we close our list of the best web designs of 2020 and 2021.
A dizzying web design and build.
A giant menu and navigation that wastes no time: we’re looking at a web design that’s highly effective and decisive. None of which takes it away from the latest web design trends and the use of technology in development.
Conclusions
As you can see, the best web designs of 2020 and 2021 already build in many of the web design trends of 2021 and the graphic design trends of 2021.
This selection is the result of dozens of hours spent each year following and assessing the best websites around.
To put it together we looked at more than 360 sites, sampled from the middle of last year through to today.
The end user’s experience is part of what explains the solutions we’ve just seen.
Previous years’ editions
- Best web designs 2019-2020
- Best web designs 2018-2019
- Best web designs 2017-2018
- Best web designs 2016-2017
Related work
If this selection helps you order your thinking, these two articles go into the reasoning behind each decision, and this is where I explain how I apply it on client projects:
