Browse by decision
Craft
Movement is on 53% of winners, making it the commonest decision anyone makes; a loud palette is on 22%. Each of the 23 decisions here carries the kinds of site that reach for it most, so a trait can be read as a signal about the brief rather than a style.
The short version
- 1Movement comes first.
About half of all winners animate. It is the commonest single decision in the field.
- 2A loud palette is a choice.
About one winner in five uses several strong colors at once.
- 3Each decision points to a kind of site.
Every trait lists the kinds of site that reach for it most, so you can tell a fit from a fashion.
- 4Lettering leads a fifth of winners.
Type-led design is common. The award body never records which typeface, so this page cannot either.
- 5Use it as a menu.
Pick the decisions your kind of site makes most often, then look at the winners that made them.
The detail
Winners carrying animation — at 53%, the single most common decision in award-winning work.
4 traits
Colour
How much, how loud, and what the rest of the page is doing while it happens.
13 traits
Structure
How the page is put together and how you get through it.
6 traits
Motion
What moves, what it moves in response to, and how much of the work it carries.
Counted across 714 confirmed winners. A trait carried by fewer than twelve of them is left out — below that the genre comparisons stop meaning anything.
Not here
Type
There is no fourth section for typefaces, for a reason worth knowing before you go looking. The award body records that a site is type-led — a fifth of winners are — but never what it was set in. So a type section could tell you that a fifth of the best work on the web leads on its lettering, and nothing whatsoever about which lettering — which is the only thing anyone opening it wants.