23 Beautiful Examples of Web Site Archives

When it comes to beautiful web design, one of the most overlooked elements of a web site is the site’s archive listings. As a result, I really appreciate a well-designed archive listing when I come across one, and have gathered together some of the best examples I’ve seen for this article.

Let’s take a tour through this collection of sites in which the archive listings are original, beautifully designed and, in some cases, bursting with attention to detail. Along the way, we’ll discuss what magic has been employed to make an archive’s look work so well.

A couple of really standout sites appear more than once here, due to the multiple ways in which archive listings are presented on the same site.

Sidebars

One of the most common places for a site to display its archive listings is in the sidebar. These listings are typically broken up into a listing by category and by date, and sometimes may include a listing by recency, a calendar view, or a tag cloud.

Let’s take a look at Szabolcs Bakos’s site, New Concept.

In this example, the archive listing is displayed in the second column—one of two sidebars on the right side of the page.

This archive listing starts with Categories, then has two links to a complete archive and a category archive, followed by Recent Comments. It has a very blocky treatment, but it works nicely with the site design.

Here’s Viget Labs Inspire

The archive treatment in this sidebar, showing the recent comments and recent entries, are minimal yet elegant. The spacing and typography work well and make this example very attractive.

The header treatments in this sidebar are nice. But what really catches my eye is the most recent comment, which is beautifully styled in a phylactery with a watercolor background. The type is low-contrast, so could be considered hard to read; however, in this context, as it’s not the predominant element on the page, it’s a great effect (and includes a link to the comment where it can be read in higher contrast).

Next, The Statement.

The Statement uses a bold sidebar for its archive listing, which feels dimensional, even though it’s just a solid stripe with rules.

The most popular posts are very dominant, and use a fun numbered style to indicate the order of popularity.