Typographic
navbars
These navbars do away with fancy layouts and illustrations and instead focus on what matters; words.
About typographic navbars
Typographic navbars make the type the whole interface. No icons, no imagery, often no borders. The typeface and the spacing around it do all the work of telling you where you can go.
Velvetyne, a type foundry, is the clearest example: the entire navigation is laid out across the top of the hero in the foundry's own fonts. If your product is type, your navbar should probably be type too.