This is an interesting topic, that every web designer eventually comes across. We don’t think about our real original source: nature. We take everything from it. Our gradients are inspired by the sky. Silhouettes by sunrise and sunset. Many of our logos are directly inspired by our natural surroundings. As an example when Sean came up with our companies name and designed our logo, the first place he looked was outside, because that is the source for all true art.

Web designers aren’t the first group of artists be be awed by their surroundings. Look at any of your favorite artists work from any time and much of the work you see is of a tree, a lake, sunset over a mountain, or a night sky. So it comes to no surprise that web designers do the same thing.

Everything has a source. So, when all there was around us was nature, nature was what inspired people. Still our surroundings are comprised mainly of things that are not man made, and still the majority of what we do has it’s source in nature.

Examples of Nature in Web Design

Valen Designs

Valen Designs created the websites for Envato, a very popular web based tutorial website. Be sure to take notice of his logo.

Viget Inspire

Viget Inspire is all nature. They made a beautiful watercolor inspired design of a mountain landscape, in a sunset.

Ali Felski

This is another really cool one. She uses a night scene, with a grungy floral layer over it as her header.

Story Pixel

A corn field. This is a perfect example of taking part of your everyday life, and portraying it in such a creative manner.

Sunrise Design

This ones really cool. If you visit their site, you can see a cool moving cloud effect done in JQuery which actually inspired the bubbles in my own personal portfolio site.