I’ve been noticing a new trend in web design which, despite my penchant for minimal and sleek, I find myself quite liking. It’s the use of wide, striking background images in many sites that I’ve come across lately. Web Designer Wall is of course an obvious example. I have a varied set of niche design tastes, really. Colorful, bold, and graphic is definitely one of them, so this trend works for me on that level.

I think I particularly like the way such a simple technique can be used to add this whole new layer of depth to a page. All that’s really going on is a large, simple, non-repeating body or wrapper background image in the CSS, but it’s just so fetching if done right!

Here is one of my favorite applications at MTV.com, ironically. Now that I have a shiny new MacBook Pro, I can venture to go to flash-intensive and other heavy-handed websites without watching my computer slowly choke its way into crashing, so I popped by their site on a whim a few weeks back to see what direction they had taken as of late. What I really like about this particular implementation is the thought put into the showcasing technique–when you refresh a completely new image is culled from a behind-the-scenes collection (some are shitty, some are awesome!).

MTV can totally get away with an effect as jarring as that, though I doubt it would be best-practice for most sites. But it really makes you feel like they’re trying to get the point across that there’s a community at work, and that independent artists were possibly asked to contribute their take on what MTV feels like visually. I mean who knows, maybe it’s all internally-created stuff, but it totally projects a Web 2.0-friendly feeling of participation and exchange, and it’s very interesting.

That’s the only example I’ve seen so far that dynamically changes, but there are some other static examples which are just as invigorating. Here’s a list of my other favorites:

1. Pitchfork TV
   This new arm of Pitchfork apparently just launched, and as you can see they went all out with the graphic experience. Very cool. *edit: as Doug points out in the comments, if you click on the nav the background actually does do some pretty cool stuff, so it’s not exactly static. Damn, why did I think the background image below was so long without question?

   Background image quicklink:
   http://pitchfork.tv/sites/pitchfork.tv/themes/pitchfork_tv/images/bg_graphic.jpg

2. Rimmel London
   Almost a bit of overkill, but just look at the detail and time put into all that texture…

   Background image quicklink:
   http://www.rimmellondon.com/images/home.jpg

3. Viget Labs: Inspire Blog
   I love the textural watercolor! Kinda earthy but still comes out completely polished..how do you even make this stuff? Awesome detail work, as well.

   Background image quicklink:
   http://www.viget.com/images/inspire/inner_wrapper_bg.jpg

4. Diana+
   Yep, my Christmas camera…still working on taking those pictures…took some good ones at Cherry Blossom Festival I hope! Anyhow, very carefree (yet careful I’m sure) use of their own product’s results.

   Background image quicklink:
   http://www.lomography.com/diana/images/background_3.jpg

5. Future of Web Apps, Miami 2008
   This guy always does awesome stuff, and I think looking through his portfolio is where I first started noticing this bold technique. I also love how well he manages to organize all of that information on the page without making it boring OR too busy. Tricky, I know.

   Background image quicklink:
   http://futureofwebapps.com/2008/miami/assets/images/presentation/body01.jpg

6. Free People
   One of my favorite little stores, though I haven’t actually bought anything there yet…not so much into the hippy-dippy stiff as the more modern, intricately detailed pieces. Dying for this menswear swimsuit.

Any examples I may have missed? Feel free to share them! I would love to see more…

Tags: background, background images, css, html, modern