Web Design Trend Hunting – The Messy Desk: Examples & Best Practices

I think right after the “wood background” huge – and recently annoying – trend, a new small sub-trend was born and still stays with us: the messy desk with everything thrown on it, from empty coffee cups to crumpled papers, pens, post-its, cookies, stickers, tea-bags, and so on. Apparently the untidier the homepage-desk is, the more cool and trendy is the owner

Well let’s see a few examples and then decide if this small trend deserves to get stronger or to quiet down a little.

VigeTurf

Digitals By Kobke

Jason Bradbury

Inifinity WordPress Theme

George Marez

Gelattina

Askia

So what do you think?

I’m waiting for your opinions (and other examples) in the comments. Thanks!

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Catalin Zorzini

Catalin is the founder of Mostash - a social marketing boutique - and he's always happy to share his passion for graphic design & social media. Catalin Zorzini has 219 posts at Inspired Mag & counting!

Comments

memedai June 14th

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/08/infinity-a-free-wordpress-theme/

Drajje uses this free theme from yichi (vikiworks.com) I would give yichi the credits.
Megan Strickland June 14th

I’m not a fan, mostly because this kind of design tends to lean heavily on text-as-image, which is not very open web. Once we have @font-face to play with, I’ll be a lot more interested.
Evil Mammoth June 14th

Frankly, the wood background thing doesn’t really bother me. I kind of like it actually even if it’s overused.

Most of the designs above are far too busy, though.
romeo marquez June 14th

Here’s another messy desk: http://www.gelattina.com
Mike Smith June 14th

Nice round up here. Definitely some good ones. I agree though that some are a bit busy. The wood backgrounds definitely got overdone when the first few websites came out. Some still get designed now that do look good though, but for the most part – wood=overused
Uncleserb June 14th

Nice choice, here’s another one in the desk modd: http://www.askia.com/
Webdesign June 15th

Personally I don’t like all this naturally stuff, but nice article anyway and worth to remember!
Ben June 15th

I’m definitely voting for this trend to quiet down a little! It looks so messy, everything seems to be there just for the sake of being there.
Catalin Zorzini June 16th

Thank you guys for your feedback. Any other examples?
uk web hosting June 16th

I like this trend for personal sites, but I don’t think they’re great for mainstream businesses. However, I found a graphic design company who has a pretty cool messy desk theme for their site–http://www.codingmonkeys.co.uk/v2/

They actually use metaphorical navigation which I know a lot of people hate, but I actually like it on their site.

I just wrote a blog about this trend and how it has made its way to WordPress themes. You can find the article at http://www.evohosting.co.uk/blog/web-development/wordpress-web-development/free-desktop-wordpress-themes/

I guess it’s all a matter of opinion, but I happen to like this trend.
Dorje June 18th

these photos are nice
Fede June 24th

I did a messy table design for a company I used to work for, back in January (when it was still a very fresh trend). Unfortunately it never went live, but here’s a link to the prototype:

http://kreativmango.no/fredrik/web/bouncingfish/index.html

I was given the initial idea and then did everything else myself (logo, design and coding). As you can probably tell, it’s my favourite work. My personal masterpiece :p

(PS Try moving the cup or the pencil, or double-clicking on the cup.. Some easter eggs i put in there.)
Catalin Zorzini June 24th

Whoa, Fede, it’s a great website! I’ll make a screenshot and add it to the collection. Congrats!
anthony June 25th

Really great information, explained nicely with examples. Thanks for sharing.
pista June 27th

Nah, hope this trend will fade away soon. Messy can be cool in some way but this kind definitely looses point of what website is all about. Actually I really don’t like off-topic graphics on sites. However some ppl are still graphic designers than webdesigners – huge difference.
smith web designer assistant June 28th

great design I update my collection with your design.

Thanks,
smith alfred
http://www.websitedevelopment-india.com
Sbs SonuÃ§larÄ± June 29th

Thanks admin
Kim H June 29th

I don’t particularly like it; I feel like it can be too distracted and confusing for the user in many cases, and even detract from the content (the most important part of any site).

During its first beginnings it was new and creative, but I think it is a trend that should honestly die down.
Roman July 15th

I don’t know why there’s such an aversion to this trend. I personally think it’s only natural.

After all, there is no “right” answer to content layout and design, and by representing a website as an easily identifiable physical space, the user interface becomes as important as the content. The things we keep on our desk can easily be seen as being representative of ourselves.

I used a desk as the background on my site, and put together a small list like this about site intro text.

http://www.romandiaz.me/personable-and-informative-site-intros/
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