February 20, 2004 | View Comments (35) | Category: Design
Summary: What is your favorite website from a design standpoint?
While doing some work this week I experienced some extremely profound thoughts about design theory. Unfortunately, I went to sleep and they were all erased. To discuss different design styles would take many volumes of books and maybe it is something that I will explore deeper in time. However, let's just keep it simple and discuss what our favorite websites are from a design standpoint. The site can be ol' school tabled design, crazy flash, or lean and mean CSS. My two favorites are Coudal Partners (discussed many times here) and Cuban Council. Of course these are off the top of my head so I am sure to be missing many.
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Oooo, flattery will get you everywhere. Keep up the good work huphtur.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
I believe less is more and I love simple sites ... I don't mind a little flash, but I really don't like full-blown flash sites ...
one of my favorite sites is http://twinsparc.com ... another good one is http://olivedesign.com
chuckmallott (http://geocities.com/threendg)
These are a few of the sites which draw me in on some emotional level - either visually and / or with sound / music
lookandfeel.com - Really enjoy the intro
nasa.gov - Nice layout
neostream.com - Interactivity w/character
griffintechnology.com - clean layout / color scheme
triaxcapital.com - ditto above
415.com - simplicity
sbigroup.com - nice layout / colors
estudio.com - fun / check out the "lab"
gulfstream.com - makes me want to place an order
bigha.com - personable
webceo.com - cool site / cool tool. Interface for the program equally as nice - especially the account upgrade page
spearedpeanut.com - Very creative navigation
wddg.com - the theme music / motion graphics in their flash movie (Hunt for Red October?)is best way yet I've seen of presenting a portfolio of work
xplane.com - Very clean, great graphic presentation
Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Cuban Council looks nice, but the whole bloody thing's a bunch of graphics, there's almost no real text on the whole site... not very user-friendly.
I can't remember the URL for the site I'd link here. It's a german site, and despite the fact that the whole thing's in german, I can easily navigate it. And it looks fantastic. Something to do with some kind of spice... cinnamon or nutmeg or something...they had pictures of coffee on the front page I think... grr. just can't remember it.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I really like http://www.twothirty.com
I also tend to go along with the "less is more" flavor. I like sites that are well designed, but not over-designed. Sites that allow the content to dictate the design, not the other way around.
Whitespace is a good example of that, in my opinion. Great content. Lots of content. Content driven design.
I think my design styles go through phases, as I am sure most do. I used to love the "deconstructed" look. Vir2L pulled that off well in the late 90's.
Now I find myself leaning towards cleaner design. Maybe that is because of a greater interest in accessiblity and usability.
I really like some of the new commercial sites that are going to CSS: Sprint, Cingular, etc.
I really like http://www.hillmancurtis.com
I think it has quietly converted from all Images to valid XHTML and CSS.
Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)
JC: I think you mean Cinnamon, which is in Dutch, or Lambertin-Grotegerd, which is in German.
Both great examples of clean, well-design CSS sites.
Nick (http://www.mimeme.net)
This should be fun.
I really like http://www.pga.com/ and it's related sites. Their not my favorite design visually, but they're very good and offer the best balance of form, function, standards support, flash, etc. that I know of. To me this is very impressive.
I've always loved http://www.k10k.net/ visually, but it takes forever to load so I just skip to the news page every-time.
You know, it's hard, because most of the sites I like visually aren't all that functional, and most of the sites I feel have been "designed" from a visual sense are over-done and very "samey".
I was looking at http://www.gmunk.com/ today. It's damn near useless and looks like 1,000,000 other sites out there.
As much as I hate to say it, design on the Web today is still much about Flash, both as an adjective and an application. Just check the http://www.may1reboot.com/ site and read the participants quotes. It's all about showing off and frankly none of these sites are that good, even visually. They seem tired to me.
It's high time for a revolution in Web design. It needs to grow up as well as just do something new. Hopefully bringing some function into the mix.
If you're not going to build a usable Web site who's goal is to function well -- at least do something different for goodness sake.
I'll shut up now.
Keith (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/)
The new Hillman Curtis site is freakin me out with that video of people staring back at me.
Effective however, as I was caught in a trance of staring back at them waiting for someone to do something
Wait a minute... I'm staring and waiting for them to do something and their staring back and waiting for me...
Cool marketing gimmick.
Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
I've always liked Lucid Circus: http://www.lucidcircus.com/ and Sapient: http://www.sapient.com/ and Zeldman's Happy Cog: http://www.happycog.com is great too.
Man...there are so many others out there that I really dig. It's hard to pin one favorite down out of all of them.
Todd (http://www.monkeyhouselounge.com/loungeact/)
That twothirty.com is nice, I also like
I will have to save the cssvault is one of my fav's as well.
lets see, another would be...
simplebits
Bryan (http://www.gamecubecheats.info)
Nick - Yes, I believe it was cinnamon.nl. It's not the same design I recall, but it's quite similar. I seem to recall the header being larger (taking up almost half of the page at 1024x768), and there being more of a cinnamon color to the page.
Nice looking site. It's amazing what you can do with a few high quality graphics for accent.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Jeremy, have you tried using Sprint's website? specifically the account maintenance page for a PCS phone account? I can't stand it. It's terribly slow, and tends to lose track of what I've clicked on (links sometimes take me bcak to the start page instead of to the detail page I'm requesting). It's at least usable in IE Windows, for safari on the mac, I gave up trying to pay my bill after about 10 minutes of screwing with it.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I actually have a great love for many sites. I'll probably contribute more later, but wanted to point out that there can be a wide berth between a functional/accessible website and a very pretty website.
For example, I adore the look of this site: http://www.imoments.org/ The biggest issue is that it is almost 100% made of high-rez graphics. He makes good use of the lowsrc tag, but it still takes forever to load each page of the website. And, of course, it doesn't make for an accessible website. But, darn, it sure is pretty.
People coming from a graphic design base of experience rarely have a good grasp upon the limitations of the internet. This can be illustrated by two graphic design people that I have worked with.
1. Graphic designer gives me illustrated screenshots of each webpage of a website. In Adobe Illustrator. Graphic heavy screenshots with custom typography and little realization that, hey, you can't do THAT in HTML unless you make the whole webpage to be a graphic.
2. Another graphic designer wants me to revert the header used on the website to the original header she sent me. The header she sent me was 300 dpi at 2,000px by 1,500px. Why? Because the original printed out perfectly the way she wanted. The smaller, low rez image I used did not. Uhm. No.
I guess there is no really real point to this, but I think they have a lot to offer from a visual perspective, in ways that web designers can't. Because as a web designer, I'm already aware of the limitations of the web, and it usually ends up unnecessarily limiting my designs. I'd like to see more graphic designers teaming up with web designers. It could lead to a powerful outcome.
Alanna (http://www.expio.net)
Uh oh, this might take awhile ;)
Mike (http://phark.typepad.com)
JC - I am currently a Cingular customer, so I have used their site extensively to pay bills, view account info, etc., and must say that it is quite easy to use.
I have used sprints site as far as looking for new plans, comparing to my current plan, looking at phones, etc., but have no knowledge of how the other parts of the site work.
Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)
37Signals anyone? Specifically their Design Not Found site.
I also like AdaptivePath's site as well. The new Goto Media site rocks, very warming design.
I also like the simple sites, and SimpleBits is one of my favorite, probably because of the branding. Though Whitespace is pretty good too (Paul, you owe me some cash now) and Keith's site is also pretty tight.
I guess I am getting bored with "over design" ...I mean, I think the people who designed those sites are great and yes, they do amazing work, but it just doesn't appeal to me anymore... kind of like how eyecandy bevels and dropshadows only appealed to me back in the late '90s (sorry Jeffrey).
I think there are a handful of other sites out the whose design really appeals to me and makes me thing "gee, I should have thought of that" and keeps me just looking in amazement.
But to use Keith's famous words, there is no perfect web design just like there is no perfect web site.
Nick (http://www.digital-web.com)
Well I was planning on a redesign to pretty some things up around here, but since you like it Nick, I will keep it for a few more days ;)
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Nothing new here - Dominey's PGA site, BigHa, and 37s' DNF are all super sweet!
Trisignia (http://trisignia.com/)
Another one I really liked was Keith's .... before he redesigned.
Sorry, Keith. I still like it a lot, but I really loved that fabric background image, it was really classy. I do like the new asterisk a lot though. looks more like a stylized snowflake, which is cool. :-)
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I don't have one favorite. I don't remember them anyway. Still, I saw this in the Vault and keep going to check it out for the rotating images: www.pixelgraphix.de
I like evocative images and level of detail. There are some good minimalist sites, but too many of the "try again, better luck next time" bunch. Am I being harsh? ((((((-_-);;;
There are also many table-based designs I like. Here are some:
www.typerecords.com
www.comatosedesign.com
www.stockholmdesignlab.se
www.frogdesign.com
www.oyster.co.uk
www.webxpress.com
www.labwerks.com
www.crystalpixel.com
www.netymology.com
www.designaddict.com
evb.com
Zelnox
This one would be much better if you put search capability on it.
Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Perhaps that might be a great "starting project" for you.
Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Firewheel Design for bold design and neat code.
Timpelen Lamborghini for sheer content and organisation that validates and is "different" from the trends.
For what is referred to as the "crazy" Flash category I put forward Front and Periscope
Cheers.
John (http://www.wow-factor.com)
Hey JC -- Your wish is my command.
On the Flash tip, check out TDCollins and 4RealDough. Fun sites with nifty visuals.
Keith (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/)
Seriously though, if I were to list all the admirably-designed sites I've seen, it would take a very long time. Here's just one of special note that I've seen:
Alazanto
Just look at that. Simply beautiful.
Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)
in no order:
http://www.sidesh0w.com/
http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/
http://www.simplebits.com/
http://www.waferbaby.com/
http://it.sweeting.net/
maybe some of the sites mentioned by commentors in this thread could be added to the css vault for others' reference?
vlad (http://vlad.neosurge.net/)
sorry for double comment, but it appears as though no one's mentioned automatic labs yet, so i'll add that to my list.
vlad (http://vlad.neosurge.net/)
On an aside, Kevin from Alazanto just gave a little insight on his process for coming up with his design.
Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)
I've been following this discussion over the weekend and a few of my favorites have come up but no one has yet mentioned The Man In Blue (http://www.themaninblue.com/) which is I think is one of the most original designs I've seen in a while.
I also agree with Keith's comments. There are alot of tired looking Flash sites out there, "mutton dressed up as lamb" as we'd say in Aus.
dez (http://dezwozhere.com/blog/)
im going to vote for http://www.themaninblue.com/ as well... it's very clean, and somewhat different than most pages right now - the shading rocks.
andrew (http://www.walkingnorth.com)
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#1
cssvault! hehe
huphtur (http://www.huphtur.nl)