Focus :: Graphic Design Studio Websites

Originally published 2010. Updated March 2026.

Studio websites are a peculiar design problem. The work has to speak for itself — but the site has to speak for the studio before a single project is clicked. Untrammelled by client requests and free to invest the time and budget, studios have always been able to bring their full collaborative energy to their own digital presence. The results are instructive.

This post was originally written in 2010, when micro-interactions and Flash-based navigation were at their peak. Web design has changed dramatically since then — responsive layouts, CSS animation, and the end of Flash have all shifted the landscape. But the design principles these studios demonstrated still hold. We have updated links where studios have moved and removed sites that no longer exist.

What makes a studio site distinctive?

The best studio sites make an argument before you have seen a single project. They commit to a concept — a colour field, a typographic system, a navigational metaphor — and hold it without flinching. The studios below each found a different way to do this.

Meta Design

Germany’s Meta Design crafted a predictably — and pleasingly — Swiss affair for their studio website. Vertical sub-menus guide the visitor through the site’s architecture; rolling news headlines along the bottom of the screen lend seriousness to the whole. A studio that has earned the right to be confident in its own restraint.

Madethought

The easing functions on the website of Madethought are difficult to beat: the rising and falling of the sub-menus an addictive pleasure for the visitor. These are housed at the bottom of the screen within an understated black design which showcases some genuinely impressive work. The constraint of the frame makes the work feel more precious.

Effektive

Scotland-based Effektive created a site with a colour scheme of matte greys and a single dynamic blue. Sub-menus become endowed with a blue bar on hover, and animated files flash past in displays of individual projects. Restraint and energy in careful balance.

Bunch

Bunch, of London, got the easing of its sub-menus exactly right. Four thick black slabs open to reveal an abundance of links; lots of quick animation is present but never overbearing, never detracting from the work on show. Their search facility — filter by year, type, media, technique and application — rewarded curious visitors and signalled a studio that thought carefully about how people navigate.

North

For sheer confidence and originality, North warrants particular attention. The designers elected to show a single page of logotypes, which segue randomly from grey to colour in a delicate sequence. Tantalising, restrained brilliance. It is the kind of decision that only a studio with total faith in its work could make.

Frost

Australia’s Frost went for a concept based around Apple’s coverflow interface. Visitors are presented on the homepage with a vast collection of project icons and invited to speed through them. Once a project is opened, navigating back to the thumbnails or forward to the next is simplicity itself. The logic is so clear it disappears.

What to take from this

Studio websites change frequently — the sites above look different today than they did when this post was first written, and some have been redesigned several times. What does not change is the underlying challenge: how do you represent a studio’s identity in a medium that is itself in constant motion?

The answer, in each of the cases above, was the same: commit to a concept and execute it without compromise. That principle holds regardless of technology.

If you are interested in building your own design practice, see our European Websites and A State of Independents posts for more on design culture and independent practice. Our Certificate IV in Graphic Design gives you the foundations to think and work at this level.