Design sites are the most competitive category on A1, and the largest. Studios, freelancers and design tools all live here, and every one of them is being judged on the site itself. A design studio with a mediocre website has already lost the pitch. The sites here — Soren, Daniel Sun, Heron, Interfaces — are the ones where the site is proof. The first thing to look at is the work. The good sites lead with it: big, fast-loading, and cropped to show the detail rather than a mockup of a laptop on a desk. Case studies say what the problem was and what changed, in a paragraph, not an essay. The weak sites lead with a manifesto and hide the work three clicks deep. The second is the craft on the page itself. Transitions that feel considered, type set properly, spacing that’s consistent to the pixel. Design buyers notice a misaligned grid. The third is personality. The category is crowded, so the sites that stand out have a voice — a typeface nobody else uses, a colour, a way of writing. Most are built on Framer or Webflow, with the more technical studios on Next.js. Browse designer profiles, or narrower cuts: minimal design, animated design, typographic design, dark design and photography design.
