All Annotations of Footers In Modern Web Design: Creative Examples and Ideas | Design Showcase | Smashing Magazine[Preview]

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• Footers In Modern Web Design: Creative Examples and Ideas

• According to classic principles of web design, everything at the bottom of the page isn’t that important. Most users think like that. And most designers are convinced that this is true. Site elements at the bottom of the page aren’t really able to catch visitors’ attention which is why footers are often forgotten or ignored and not given the attention they deserve.

  
  

  In fact, most footers are rather boring and uninspiring. Designers often use the bottom area to mention everything they haven’t found place for at the top of the site. E.g. disclaimers, W3C-buttons, copyright, “back to the top”-link and contact details. But if most designers forget it, why don’t make use of it? Why don’t use footers to impress visitors with something they actually don’t expect at all?

  
  

  This post presents creative examples of footers and ideas for footer design. We’ve tried to identify some trends and some interesting approaches you may want to use or develop further in your projects.

• A typical example is DesignShack with the whole navigation menu placed at the bottom of the site.

  
  

  

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• Colors clearly separate content and footer
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• Illustrations in use
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• Footers with advanced functions
• Apart from visual appeal, footers can be used effectively to convey some important information quickly and shortly. Contact information, address, sitemap, main sections can therefore often be found in the footer. However, also further functionalities, such as RSS-feed, e-mail-subscription and tag clouds can be placed there too.
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