Every month, Hook Agency partners with web designers to participate in the One Hour Web Challenge. The rules are simple: the designer must take 60 minutes (no more or less) to design the hero section of a website. The website can be made up or it can be a redesign of a brand you like. The more gratuitous the design, the better.

We started doing this challenge about a year ago when Hook Agency CEO & Lead Strategist Tim Brown and I frequented the design website, Dribbble, for early client inspiration. What we found was that although there was a lot of great looking website design on that site, we weren’t sure how much of it was practical. It seemed like much of the designs chose to defy standard web convention for getting more leads. So out of the desire to emulate those designs, we used the design challenge as a creative outlet to take our shot at more conceptual, non-client web design. Thus, our design challenge was born.

September 2020

This month marked the end of Summer and beginning of cool weather in Minnesota. Naturally, all of the Design Challenge contestants have been thinking about Fall and it shows. Squirrels, apples, earth tones, and the new seasons of our favorite shows are a few Fall website themes to dominate this September’s challenge entries.

Apple Orchard

Designer: Emma Maddock – Marketing Specialist at Moore Engineering
LinkedIn | Portfolio

Squirrel Hats

Designer: Clay Oglesby – UX Visual Designer at US Bank
LinkedIn | Portfolio

Urban Hiatus

Designer: Greta Whittenberg – Owner & Designer at Creativ Endeavor
LinkedIn | Portfolio

The Mandalorian

Designer: Matt Anderson – Developer at Hook Agency
LinkedIn | Portfolio

Creative Ritual

Designer: Tim Brown – CEO / Lead Strategist at Hook Agency
LinkedIn | Portfolio

La Bibliotheque

Designer: Zach Morin – Art Direction at Hook Agency
LinkedIn | Portfolio

The Stoic Way

Designer: Christina LeClaire – Freelance Designer / Owner at The Babe Rebellion
LinkedIn | Portfolio

August 2020

While we’ve run the design challenge before, this was our first time reaching out to designers in our network to participate. After seeing all of the entries come I was exited to seeing a some underlying themes present throughout the designs. The use of big, bold typography as well as intense gradients is a style is resonating with designers lately. My favorite part about seeing these emerge is that none of the designers knew what the other designers were creating at the time. The current consciousness of design is thus revealed through these recurring elements.

Once all the designs were in I asked three Hook team members to reveal their top 3 favorite designs:

Cole S: 1. Tres Abuelos Tequila 2. Up-Down 3. Flamingo
Emily G: 1. Tres Abuelos Tequila 2. NASA 3. Up-Down
Casey S: 1. NASA 2. Flamingo 3. Up-Down