Chances are you wouldn't be able to recognize your friends or loved ones without their skin, but how about your favorite websites? Can you tell them apart when they are stripped right down to their wireframes?
Dedesign the Web and Dedesign the Web 2 are a pair of browser-based games built by Chicago-based UI and UX design bootcamp Designation.io shows you just how memorably designed many of the most popular websites are, even without all their surface details.
It turns out that sites like Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and Facebook are recognizable even without all the logos and distinct iconography which are most strongly associated. There were very few sites I couldn't recognize just from their wireframe elements, which is, in a way, a depressing testament to just how much time I spend on these sites: like a lover, I can recognize them by digital touch alone.
So while we all spend a lot of time obsessing about logos and branding, a great site design starts well beneath the skin.
[h/t Siderbar.io]