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The most unconventional websites do more than decorate familiar pages with bold colors, unusual type, or animation. They change what a website is. A site may become a documentary landscape, a graphic novel, a musical instrument, a navigable globe, a museum timeline, or a descent through the ocean.
That shift changes the visitor’s role too. Instead of simply reading and clicking through menus, the visitor explores, listens, plays, rotates, composes, searches, or watches a story unfold. The ten examples below show how interaction can become part of the subject itself—and what painters, illustrators, and other visual creators can borrow without copying the effects.
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What makes a web design genuinely unconventional?
A website is unconventional when its interface changes the relationship between content, navigation, and participation. The unusual element is not merely visual novelty. It is the logic of the experience.
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- Navigation becomes content: a globe, landscape, or timeline is also the menu.
- Scrolling communicates meaning: moving down the page can represent descending, traveling, or progressing through a story.
- The browser becomes a medium: sound, keyboard input, animation, or spatial manipulation becomes the main content.
- The interaction fits the subject: geography helps explore radio, depth helps explain the ocean, and surveillance is represented through a tracked landscape.
The strongest experimental sites are not unusual at random. Their interface gives visitors a more intuitive way to understand the idea behind the work.
Websites that turn navigation into a world
1. Bear 71: a documentary presented as a surveillance landscape
Bear 71 is an interactive documentary from the National Film Board of Canada, created by Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison. It originally launched in 2012 and follows a female grizzly bear tracked by park rangers, examining the relationship between wildlife, people, networks, surveillance, and digital information.
Rather than presenting the documentary as a conventional video page, the project places the story within a digital representation of Banff National Park. Visitors move through the landscape, encounter fragments of the narrative, and become part of the work’s larger observation system. The subject and the interface are therefore inseparable: a story about being watched is experienced through a system of tracking and spatial awareness.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsThe National Film Board also documents a later VR version. Treat its device-access details as historical, and check current browser and headset compatibility before describing the experience as operational.
Design lesson: if your subject involves place, movement, ecology, mapping, or surveillance, a spatial interface may communicate more than a linear article or gallery grid. For a painter, that could mean allowing viewers to move through a painted environment rather than viewing isolated images in a fixed order.
2. Radio Garden: the globe is the menu
Radio Garden turns the world into a radio directory. Users explore a globe and select locations to hear radio stations from different places. The globe is the primary navigation system: moving across geographic space creates the feeling of traveling and makes the relationship between a station and its location immediately understandable.
The map is not a decorative background behind a list. It makes discovery itself memorable: a conventional directory asks visitors what they want, while a globe invites them to find something they did not know to ask for.
Design lesson: use spatial navigation when your content already has a meaningful relationship to geography. An artist working in regional landscapes, travel sketches, or cultural archives could let visitors browse by place instead of forcing them through categories such as “portraits,” “landscapes,” and “recent work.”
3. Museum of the World: a collection organized by time and place
Museum of the World, developed in collaboration with the British Museum and Google, presents collection objects through a chronological and geographic journey. The experience combines images, contextual information, and recorded commentaries, connecting objects across cultures and historical periods.
It avoids treating the museum as a catalog grid in which every object is an isolated thumbnail. Instead, visitors follow relationships across time and space. The interface encourages questions such as: What was happening elsewhere during this period? Which objects share a material, theme, or historical connection?
The project is a historical reference; the available British Museum and Google Arts & Culture records do not establish that the original experience remains fully available.
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Design lesson: unconventional navigation is most valuable when it reveals connections that ordinary menus hide. A painter’s archive could be organized as a journey through influences, locations, recurring motifs, or changes in palette—not just as a collection of image files.
Websites that borrow another medium
4. The Boat: a graphic novel that uses the browser’s movement
The Boat was described by SBS as an interactive graphic novel. It adapts a short-fiction story into an animated, interactive work distributed over the web.
The project combines panels, text, animation, sound, transitions, and scrolling into one continuous narrative. It does not simply reproduce a printed comic on a screen. The movement of the page becomes part of the storytelling grammar: the visitor controls the pace, while transitions and animation create reveals that would not exist in the same form on paper.
The SBS project URL exposed only basic site navigation during the research check. Do not claim that the original experience currently works without checking it directly.
Design lesson: borrowing from another medium works best when you translate its underlying grammar rather than its surface appearance. A painter might borrow the slow reveal of a graphic novel, the silence between frames, or the deliberate pacing of a film while still creating an experience native to the web.
5. NASA Prospect: a website as a cinematic planetary journey
NASA Prospect is a science-fiction interactive story about planet prospectors left behind after a global disaster. The fictional crew travels through a solar system to recover objects scattered across different planets. Its project page identifies it as a 2012 student-created work from the University of South Dakota and notes that its source files were released under the MIT License.
NASA Prospect does not begin with a conventional home page full of content blocks. It establishes a storyworld and gives the visitor a sequence of destinations, music, and discoveries. The site feels like a journey through a fictional solar system rather than a brochure about a project.
Design lesson: a clear world model can make unusual navigation feel purposeful. If visitors understand where they are, what they are trying to discover, and how one location relates to another, exploration becomes a form of storytelling instead of a scavenger hunt.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Use this older project as a design reference, and check its media and browser behavior before presenting it as a current demo.
6. The Deep Sea: scrolling becomes physical descent
The Deep Sea by Neal Agarwal transforms an ordinary vertical webpage into a descent through the ocean. Visitors scroll downward through ocean zones, encountering sea life, wrecks, environmental information, and depth milestones.
The page’s great length is not just the result of having a lot of information. Distance itself is the metaphor. Every scroll suggests going deeper, and the gradual movement gives scale and suspense to the subject.
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This is a particularly effective example for visual creators because it shows how a familiar browser action can be given physical meaning. The visitor does not need a complicated control panel to understand the interaction. Scrolling is already familiar; the design simply maps it to descent.
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Design lesson: find a natural browser behavior that can represent your subject. A portfolio could use horizontal movement to suggest a panoramic mural, a gradual zoom to reveal details in a large painting, or a controlled progression to show the development of a work from sketch to finished piece.
The site contains scientific claims, but it is safest to regard it here as a design example rather than independently repeat those claims without checking a suitable scientific source.
Websites that make the browser perform
7. Chrome Music Lab: Song Maker turns a grid into an instrument
Song Maker, part of Google’s Chrome Music Lab, gives visitors a grid for creating and sharing a song. Google’s Chrome Experiments collection credits Google Creative Lab and Use All Five.
The interface is not primarily a page for reading. It is a playable instrument. The visitor performs an action—placing notes into a grid—and receives an immediate auditory result. Chrome Music Lab extends this idea with other browser-based music experiments.
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Design lesson: give visitors a meaningful verb. Let them play, draw, rotate, mix, arrange, or reveal something. A visual artist might allow visitors to alter a color sequence, assemble a collage, move through layers of a painting, or compare brushwork by interacting directly with the image.
Song Maker also demonstrates the value of a low barrier to entry. Visitors do not need to understand music production before they can make something. The interface explains itself through immediate feedback.
8. Patatap: the keyboard becomes a visual performance
Patatap describes itself as a portable animation and sound kit. Pressing keys from A to Z or the spacebar produces melodies accompanied by moving shapes. The keyboard is not a secondary shortcut system; it is the principal creative tool.
There is very little conventional content hierarchy. Visitors discover the experience by pressing keys and observing the relationship between input, sound, color, and motion. The minimal interface is expressive because every action produces a clear response.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsImportant accessibility warning: Patatap warns that it contains flashing images. People who are sensitive to flashing or rapidly changing content should avoid the experience or take appropriate precautions. This is not a minor footnote: unconventional motion design must be considered alongside accessibility and user safety.
Design lesson: an unconventional interface can be extremely simple if its input and output are immediate and legible. Do not add complexity merely to appear experimental. One well-designed interaction can be more memorable than a page filled with unrelated effects.
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9. WebGL Globe: data becomes a manipulable object
WebGL Globe was an open platform for geographic data visualization. Google’s official experiment page invited users to copy the code, add their own data, and create visualizations of their own.
The important idea is not simply that the project displayed a globe. It made the globe a programmable interface. Users could rotate and inspect the object, while geographic data took on a visible spatial form. The visualization made data feel like something to examine and manipulate rather than a static illustration.
Google marks the experiment as no longer active, although the project page remains available. It is a historical or archived example, not a currently maintained public demo.
Design lesson: choose a visual metaphor that reflects the structure of the information. A globe makes sense for geographic data; a timeline makes sense for historical change; a layered canvas may make sense for a painting process. The metaphor should clarify the content, not merely make it look technical.
10. The Searching Planet: search trends become a navigable world
The Searching Planet was co-created by Google and Miraikan, Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. The 2016 project presented Google Trends data on a globe that visitors could rotate and zoom. Its project page also describes VR content for mobile devices; treat those device details as historical, not current compatibility guidance.
Instead of reducing search behavior to charts, rankings, or tables, the experience turned global interest into a navigable planet. The visitor could explore the metaphorical world and follow a guided visual story about how people search.
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Design lesson: data can become more memorable when visitors explore a meaningful environment instead of reading a dashboard. The challenge is to ensure that the environment helps people understand the data. If the metaphor is beautiful but obscures the information, it is an illustration—not a useful interface.
Treat The Searching Planet as an archived Google experiment unless its original launch experience is confirmed as available.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What these examples teach visual artists and web designers
1. Make the interface carry the idea
Bear 71 uses a tracked landscape because surveillance and habitat are central to its subject. Radio Garden uses geography because radio stations have locations. The Deep Sea uses vertical distance because depth is the point. These are not interchangeable visual skins.
Before choosing an effect, ask: What action would naturally express the subject? A painting about scale might invite zooming. A series about travel might use a map. A study of process might unfold layer by layer.
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Song Maker and Patatap are memorable because they give visitors something to do immediately. The user is not waiting for the content to begin; the user activates it.
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Participation does not have to mean building a complex application. It can be as modest as choosing a path, revealing a hidden detail, changing the order of images, or listening to a short commentary attached to a work.
3. Use familiar actions in unfamiliar ways
The Deep Sea does not require visitors to learn a new control scheme. It gives familiar scrolling a new meaning. Radio Garden builds exploration around a recognizable globe. The best experiments often reduce technical friction while increasing conceptual surprise.
4. Give unconventional navigation a fallback
Experimental websites can fail because a browser blocks a media file, a WebGL feature is unavailable, a mobile layout becomes unusable, or an archived project loses a dependency. A production site should provide ordinary alternatives: a visible menu, captions or transcripts, a static image view, keyboard-accessible controls, and a clear message when an interactive feature cannot load.
5. Separate inspiration from production readiness
Some of these projects are current experiences; others are historical, archived, or of uncertain compatibility. Google explicitly marks WebGL Globe inactive. The Boat, NASA Prospect, Bear 71, Museum of the World, and The Searching Planet should be checked rather than assumed to work exactly as originally presented.
An old experiment can still offer an excellent design idea. Its age simply matters when you are deciding whether to build a similar system for a client or portfolio.
A practical checklist for creating an unconventional art website
- Define the central action: will visitors explore, zoom, listen, compose, rotate, descend, or compare?
- Connect that action to the artwork: the interaction should explain or intensify the subject.
- Create a clear first step: unusual does not mean mysterious. Tell visitors what to do without covering the screen in instructions.
- Design the fallback state: provide a readable, static, or linear version of the important content.
- Test keyboard access: visitors should not be trapped in a mouse-only or gesture-only experience.
- Respect motion and flashing sensitivities: provide reduced-motion behavior and avoid unsafe flashing patterns.
- Check mobile behavior: a globe, canvas, or scroll journey can feel completely different on a small screen.
- Protect performance: compress images, defer nonessential animation, and avoid making the visitor download the entire experience before seeing anything.
- Test failure modes: check what happens when audio is blocked, WebGL is unavailable, JavaScript fails, or a connection is slow.
- Keep a conventional route available: visitors should always be able to find your name, work, contact information, and essential context.
The principle to borrow—not the effect
These websites are useful because they show different relationships between subject and interface. A globe is not automatically meaningful, a scroll animation is not automatically cinematic, and a 3D scene is not automatically immersive.
Borrow the underlying principle instead: let the structure of the website reinforce the structure of the idea. If a visitor’s movement through the site feels like movement through the artwork’s world, the interface has become part of the work. If the effect could be removed without changing the meaning, it may only be decoration.
FAQ
Are all ten of these websites still fully functional?
No. Google explicitly marks WebGL Globe as inactive. The Boat, NASA Prospect, Bear 71, Museum of the World, and The Searching Planet are historical or should be checked for current availability and compatibility. An archived project page does not prove that its original experience still works.
What makes an unconventional website different from a visually flashy one?
An unconventional website changes how visitors access or experience the content. Its navigation, scrolling, sound, map, timeline, or interaction model carries meaning. Flashy colors and animation alone do not make a site conceptually unconventional.
Are interactive websites accessible?
They can be, but accessibility must be designed deliberately. Provide keyboard controls, captions or transcripts, reduced-motion behavior, readable contrast, clear instructions, and a static or linear alternative. Be especially careful with flashing content; Patatap itself includes a flashing-image warning.
Which example is most useful for a painter’s portfolio?
The best choice depends on the work. Museum of the World is useful for organizing work through time and connections; Radio Garden suggests browsing by place; The Deep Sea demonstrates scroll-based scale; and Song Maker or Patatap show how direct interaction can turn a visitor into a participant. The interaction should fit the paintings rather than being added for novelty.
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The Bottom Line
The best unconventional web designs make the interface explain the work. Use a map when place matters, a timeline when change matters, scrolling when distance matters, and direct manipulation when participation matters. Then add the practical essentials—accessible controls, fallbacks, mobile testing, performance checks, and honest availability labels—so the experiment remains usable as well as memorable.
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