Not a member? Why not join us or log in? (No more hassle filling in comments, less obtrusive ads and asides.)

Worn Out , Grunge, Vintage…

Posted by Marc Bernstein on October 17th, 2005.


http://

Marc Bernstein has posted 5 articles.

RSS Feed for fadtastic.net RSS Feed for Marc Bernstein

Full Profile →

Worn Out, Grunge, Vintage… Call it what you want the idea is the same: take a design and few custom made photoshop brushes and go wild. The result is a design that looks vintage and worn out.

(Check out the well written tutorial by Cameron Moll to achieve this effect)

What are the reasons for using this effect in a design? My guess is that it gives the feeling that the design has been through a lot and is not the new kid on the block. It’s been beat up and torn apart, but keeps on ticking.

I’ve noticed the Grunge vintage worn out look mostly in Personal Sites, but occassionally it crosses over to the commercial side.

http://eightface.com/
http://www.jrojr.com/
http://yesterdayishere.com/wordpress/
http://www.lanuovavela.com/

What are your feelings about this trend?
Seen any well designed prime examples?

Share This

Make A Comment

( 12 so far )

blockquote and a tags work here.

12 Responses to Worn Out , Grunge, Vintage…

Comments RSS Feed

The showcases lap these up like there’s no tomorrow. I love to see the odd ‘grunge’ site but I’ve never attempted one myself.

I think a grunge site has a certain awe factor because it looks hard to do - so many distortions and brushes to add.

Anyone seen any bad examples of grunge too?

Andrew Faulkner
October 17th, 2005
#

Every time I designed a concept layout for a project I was working on about a year ago, I showed it to a few friends and one said to me “Your really into the neo-gothic stuff aren’t you?”. I paused for a second, to think what neo-gothic was. Ever since that, I’ve found that the worn out has the ability to to keep a clean interface without the linear appearance.

It’s funny It’s quite a old trend but still works really well. Derek’s site has a subtle use off this trend, that I like quite a bit, http://www.powazek.com/.

Gavin
October 17th, 2005
#

I quite like this style, though Andy is right there are many out there, that the showcases are picking up, and its getting a bit tiresome, but once and a while I see a really good one that just WOW’s me. Nice Read :)

tomato
October 17th, 2005
#

I think the worn look is aesthetially pleasing if done well, but, I think this look is becoming slightly overdone. Like any trend, some will catch on and burn like wildfire, others take time to grow. Personally, I’ve seen this many times already and I think it’s time to try something new.

Josh
October 17th, 2005
#

I assume this effect is fairly hard to recreate using a CSS layout. Congrats to the designers named above.

Andrew Faulkner
October 20th, 2005
#

Nice page =)

Daniel
October 21st, 2005
#

This has the grunge effect, the diagonal lines, sticky tape and stickers! Wow - what a find.

http://www.braininsane.com/home.html

Andrew Faulkner
October 22nd, 2005
#

[…] Despite my best efforts at becoming a structural whore, eightface has managed to pop-up on the radar of a few CSS gallery sites — most notably, CSS Beauty, Design Shack and Fadtastic. So, hello to all the new visitors and thanks for the constructive comments and feedback. I’ve made a few changes a result, namely toning down the grunge on some of the headers. […]

Design, structure and status // eightface
October 23rd, 2005
#

Matt has a great example of grunge design here:

http://www.mattbrett.com/

Andrew Faulkner
October 31st, 2005
#

Check out djhell.com, which is exemplary. the art direction is by paul snowden - he’s one to watch

MattCG
December 23rd, 2005
#

A big fad right now seems to be the creative use of dots in domain names, or using subdomains and tld extensions as part of the site name (the first one I’ve seen was del.icio.us and many others seem to be following suit!

Rachel Maxim
February 28th, 2006
#

[…] Briefly glancing through fadtastic (apologies, but I’m swamped), I came across discussions to book for later. For instance, The Best Design Resources you can Clear in One Sitting is Phil Renaud’s collection of resources which I’ve added to my personal bookmarks. And with a client request for a site design similar to the worn look, I’ve made a note of Marc’s discussion dealing with Worn Out , Grunge, Vintage. I’m not totally convinced the worn out look is old hat, more like it’s become a style along with all the other styles around. If it’s appropriate (as in my client’s site) then it fits the bill. Getting the clean look married to the worn out look will be a challenge, but one I’m looking forward to tackling. So is this a site for bloglines? Certainly, and I’m slightly redfaced it hasn’t been added before this time. […]

Designers who Blog: Design, Illustration, Photography, Web, Advertising, Branding …
April 10th, 2006
#

↑ Jump up to the comment form

Related In Some Way, Shape Or Form

The above post has obviously kept you amused. Why not discover similar material:

The posts The Web In 2006, The Next 35 Sexiest Designed Websites You’ve Forgotten, Ten Design Resources for October, A Trends Interview ~ Part 1 of 3, are related to this post.

Or why not take time out to find out about the author of the post.