Recently in the web design industry, the use of “real world” textures and materials has become a major trend. As the average user’s internet connection continues to gets faster, it becomes more and more feasible for designers to incorporate a greater amount of imagery into their work. For this reason, we’re seeing a lot more textural imagery - for example: woods, metals, concrete, and fabrics, being used as backgrounds and for other primary imagery.

When used with care and attention to detail, these types of natural textures can add a lot of depth and character to the visuals of a site. Unfortunately, in many cases, these textures are incorporated without considering how the rest of the design would be affected. In these cases the textures can feel forced or tacked on, as if they were added as an after thought, simply to appeal to the trend.

At this point, we’d like to present a few examples of textural and material imagery done right for your inspiration, as well as a downloadable care package full of free textures to add to your bag of tricks.

Kyle Haskins

In this portfolio site, we see a pleasant, subtle use of wood texture to create a dark and smokey ambiance.

Agami Creative

Agami employs a gorgeous, watercolor-esque background. You can tell a lot of work went into this design, both in thinking through the concept, and in the pristine execution.

Bern Unlimited

This design uses torn cardboard to create a unique effect, even allowing the navigation to follow the shape of the torn edge. The content area, unfortunately, does not follow as creative an approach, resulting in feelings of unbalance and incompleteness in many areas.

Translating the creativity that we put into the homepage, headers, and footers, to the rest of a site’s content is a challenge that designers should bear in mind, especially when the design will be implemented through a CMS, ecommerce system, or other template based web application.

Design Commission

This very clean and modern layout, with a neutral gray concrete background, offers an interesting contrast in style between the grunge elements and the crisp, minimal content area.

Design*Sponge

This design really plays off of the fabric and scrap-booking concepts with a creative use of textures and real world objects. It can be a bit overwhelming in certain areas, but overall it’s an inspiring example of how these very natural textures and worldly objects can be used to create a coherent impression.

Now for the free stuff…

And now, MetaSpring is pleased to offer our first designer’s care package - a set of various textures, hand-picked from an obliging, local abandoned lumber mill.

If you like what you see, please subscribe to our blog or check back soon, as we plan on offering up many more of these packages. Enjoy!