25 Stylish Website Footer Designs

December 24th, 2008 by Jacob Gube | 63 Comments | Stumble It! Delicious

Footers on web pages have evolved from being a simple section where you host your copyright information and additional links, to a multi-functional section where you can find a variety of site features such as twitter updates, a short bio of the author, and secondary navigation.

This collection aims to showcase just some of the ways talented web designers have decided to utilize their website footers to provide that extra bit of improvement in the user’s experience.

# bcandullo.com

Edgepoint Church

I primi dieci

Blog Amuki

CSS-Tricks

SimpleBits

Branded07

Blog.SpoonGraphics

PRBLOGGER.COM

Dale Harris

Web Designer Wall

Powazek

Biola Undergrad

We Are not Freelancers

43 Folders

dreamling.ca

YoDiv

Designer&Developer

Jason Santa Maria

Helmy Bern

Personal Babblishing

SamRayner.com

Flyin’Web

David Hellmann

volll

What’s the verdict?

What do you think about modern website footers? Good place to stick site features or a terrible idea? Share your thoughts in the comments!

63 Comments

Honour Chick

December 24th, 2008

wow… all awesome footers :)

Design

December 24th, 2008

Yea, I saw this on digg and in first moment I couldn’t believe that someone bothered to make such list. But I must admit that this list is very good and cool. Good work to the people created them and good work to you too :)

An Jay

December 24th, 2008

Beautiful collection of footer designs

Chris Coyier

December 24th, 2008

Hey thanks for the shout-out Jacob! My thinking is that websites are just so incredibly tall these days what’s another few hundred pixels to really cap off a design =)

Chris W.

December 25th, 2008

Thanks for the shout Jacob. I’m honored to be listed next to the great Jason Santa Maria.

David Perel

December 25th, 2008

Thank you for featuring We Are not Freelancers! Very happy to see our site here :)

kiran

December 25th, 2008

Pretty Good collection.Nice post…

paul

December 25th, 2008

regurgitated smashing magazine article?

Pavan Kumar

December 25th, 2008

One main thing I can observe is that the usage of images. More images will lead to more loading times affecting the user experience. Design wise, all look pretty good…

Chocksy

December 25th, 2008

Wow i really like this ones. I’ll probably change mine and use these as inspiration but that after i’m sick of my current design :). Thanks for sharing.

enareksi

December 25th, 2008

I don’t know where you got those but most of those are really not that special.

Daria

December 25th, 2008

Great collection, very inspiring :)

Florea

December 25th, 2008

Beautiful collection of footer designs

Sky Xavier

December 25th, 2008

wooooowww all designs are really catchy. really nice work all of them have done. thubs up.

Niels

December 25th, 2008

I like footers filled with dynamic content. Good post to get inspiration for my own footer, thanks!

Soroush

December 25th, 2008

Nice set of footers! When I visit a website, I always check the footer to see what the designer came up with! I think it gives the website personality (similar to the header)!

I particularly like the tape deck footer in the selection above.

john may

December 25th, 2008

I like this too : http://matiasdutto.com

David Perel

December 25th, 2008

Thanks for featuring We Are not Freelancers! Awesome collection!

Jacob Gube

December 25th, 2008

@Chris Coyier: Hey buddy, thanks for dropping by and sharing the thinking behind your design.

@Chris W.: Great footer design!

@David Perel: The pleasure’s all mine, keep up the great work guys.

@Chocksy: and @Niels:That’s the goal, to inspire (even myself - check out the footer on Six Revisions!).

@Pavan Kumar: I’m glad you bring up the point with CSS background images; I think there’s a trade-off between a unique, eye-catching designs and response times due to large background images: It’s up to you as a web designer to keep that in mind and to make sure that you’re getting “your money’s worth” with the CSS background images you use.

blarghmonster

December 25th, 2008

Has no one else noticed half of these aren’t footers?

Andrew

December 25th, 2008

Vimeo.com?

David Hellmann

December 25th, 2008

yeh, thanks for including my page! Good Sites

earnpress

December 25th, 2008

Excellent list…a great deal of idea and inspiration. Never underestimate the footer.

Raj

December 25th, 2008

Nice list. Although, heh, anyone look down at the footer of this page? A little ironic, no?

Arron

December 25th, 2008

I personally don’t think it’s wise to put key calls to action in the footer, as many of these footers incorporate. Beyond the ‘gee whiz’ factor of many of this novelty designs, people generally (and understandably) don’t expect to scroll all the way down to find activities where they expect there to be a copyright notice and legalese.

As a small and perhaps related piece of evidence, ads (which are generally replete with calls to action) above the fold monetize an order of magnitude higher than those below the fold.

WebAir

December 26th, 2008

Good work Jacob! An other suggested resource > 40 Creative Footers http://www.webair.it/blog/2008/12/12/40-footers-creativi/

david

December 26th, 2008

there are some nice footers … i particularly like the idea of incorporating a contact page into the footer. that’s smart!!!

thanks for sharing these nifty ideas.

cutt

December 26th, 2008

nice post, thanks

Jacob Gube

December 26th, 2008

@Arron: I agree, important site features should be placed higher on the page where people can see them. I think that footers should be reserved for extraneous items such as Flickr sets or Twitter profiles. I do feel that once designers begin to rethink the use of the footer in their designs (like I should be doing here on Six Revisions) and start utilizing the bottom of the page more - users will begin to look for auxiliary information down there. For example, the footer has become synonymous with copyright information. The first place users go to for getting this information is at the bottom of the page. Pretty soon, users will expect other information they’ve seen in other websites be placed on the footer.

The bottom of the page is a convenient place to put things in because it doesn’t pull away from the content like the sidebar does, plus it (usually) gives you a bit more horizontal space to work with.

Amuki

December 26th, 2008

Thanks for including my Blog.

Rahul

December 26th, 2008

I like to keep the footer as much simple as possible. but seeing these designs, i think i’ll have to change my mind. some quite good designs here.

Tony

December 26th, 2008

When looking at the 43 folders image, the type is so pixelated it looks like the screenshot was taken in IE6. Why not use a browser that has better font rendering for these screenshots?

Jacob Gube

December 26th, 2008

@Tony: They were taken using Firefox 3. I did, however, scale them down in Photoshop to fit the page. If you’ve got a better way of taking screen shots, let me know - I’d appreciate it.