2006 was rich on creative, beautiful and unusual design concepts. We’ve seen a lot of whitespace, many examples of readable and usable text-design, badges, stars, rounded corners, shapes, gradients, mirror and 3D-effects – just name it. Let’s take a close look at some of the most beautiful designs we’ve seen in 2006. Links checked: May/29 2008 – 5 outdated designs deleted.
Vibrant Designs
SteveLeggat.com
Emotionslive.co.uk
Dinis91.com
Joyent.com
Haveamint.com
Vivabit.com
olivier.danchin.neuf.fr
Foxie.ru
Cameronmoll.com/portfolio
Tonyyoo.com/v2
Komodomedia.com
Bartelme.at
Quatuour.be
Onlinecenter.nu
Fall.tnvacation.com
Zero.ru
Methodarts.com
Summer.tnvacation.com
Icebrrg.com
Dark Designs
Kineda.com
Colourmod.com
Rikcat.com
BeSuperCharged.com
Veerle.duoh.com
Obuweb.com
Slideshowpro.net
Whitwa.net
Light Designs
Mstefan.com
Subdued.net
Devlounge.net
Theologisches-seminar-elstal.de
Nice-Design.co.uk
Media2006
ElectricPulp.com
SusannePaschke.de
PixelEden.net
Jek2k.com
Morellc.com
Attitudedesign.co.uk
CSS Vault
Evaneckard.com
WallopCreative.com
Jeffcroft.com
Vitaly Friedman Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. Vitaly is writer, speaker, author and editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.
Advertising
Roy Tomeij
December 19th, 2006 10:54 pmSome fine looking websites here, but also a nice illustration that “CSS-based” means nothing when applied to semantically incorrect markup. Some of these sites are even plain inaccessible.
Ramon Bispo
December 20th, 2006 12:45 amGreat stuff!
Carlos Eduardo
December 20th, 2006 2:07 amImpressive!
It’s nice to see what we can do with CSS + XHTML but, surely, we need to have in mind that a semantic markup is VERY important to a successful site.
Grey
December 20th, 2006 2:23 amBeautiful and crazy
Slaff
December 20th, 2006 3:38 amVery impressive list. But I would like to suggest one more site to this list which is missing here. With your permission:
N.Design Studio – very beautiful work!
Cheers!
Andrew
December 20th, 2006 3:45 amThanks for featuring Devlounge, great list!
mse
December 20th, 2006 4:13 amVery cool!
Prismatico
December 20th, 2006 5:49 amSuper nice work, well done :)
45n5
December 20th, 2006 11:39 amWow. Thanks for the inspiring list.
David
December 20th, 2006 12:29 pmNot to be a party pooper, but http://foxie.ru/ looks like a table-based mess to me. Or perhaps I don’t understand the rules for inclusion on this list :)
gogds
December 20th, 2006 12:32 pmReal beauty. Very inspiring. Thanks for the list.
wayne
December 20th, 2006 12:45 pmGreat list, will add to My Ma.gnolia bookmarks
gogds
December 20th, 2006 12:59 pmWhat an inspiring list! Awesome.
Cotton
December 20th, 2006 1:13 pmNice sites!
michi
December 20th, 2006 3:11 pmWow Beautiful!!!
Markus Stefan
December 20th, 2006 3:58 pmwonderfull list!
thankyou for mentioning my blog – the correct url would be http://www.mstefan.com/blog/ by the way ;)
Russell
December 20th, 2006 3:59 pmAll these sites look eerily the same. I like clean gradients and tabs as much as the next guy, but the shit has to stop. It’s like the 45 degree angle thing during late 1999-2000. (Damn you 2Advanced!) There is nothing impressive about rehashing the same crap over and over. CSS+XHTML does not mean you site needs to look like a trendy web 2.0 logo.
I’m not saying these are not good sites, because most of them are, but good design should look good 10 years later, and these will not. They are part of trend, like low-rise pants and bug-eye glasses. So take off you Von Dutch hat and think up some new ideas.
tongkis
December 20th, 2006 4:06 pmIndeed great collections man…
Noshi
December 20th, 2006 4:15 pmYeah, I think http://www.ndesign-studio.com is beautiful and Nick is great CSS designer.
daweed
December 20th, 2006 4:19 pmgreat list… with many differents styles..
2006 was a goodYear..
abhilash
December 20th, 2006 4:33 pmNice work! I got lost in the list for hours…
Nice Paul
December 20th, 2006 5:21 pmThanks for the screenshot, but you got the URL wrong – its Nice-Design.co.uk
Jakob
December 20th, 2006 5:34 pmBullshit. Why is it always LOOKS over USABILITY?
I mean there are hundreds of sites that “look nice” but are extremely difficult and tedious to use. Small text, radical colors and contrast, usage of Flash, required scrolling, useless images, too limited effective area without scaling support, non-standard solutions (= difficult to interpret what is a link/button) etc.
The list goes on and on but yet many people deem such sites as incredible.
Dewilde
December 20th, 2006 5:35 pmGreat list, all very beautiful!
Richard
December 20th, 2006 5:53 pmThis site is absolutely knackered in IE7. It doesn’t matter what the browser is, you have to cater for them all. So don’t come trying to tell me what’s good when you obviously can’t build one yourself…
And if I see one more page centered css site with a graphic popped on top of the page I am going to SCREAM.
static
December 20th, 2006 6:28 pmtake off “http://foxie.ru/” of the list it’s made out of tables!
Brendan
December 20th, 2006 7:50 pmWhat about mattbango.com, oh wait, rikcat.com stole his design and then gets the credit.
Archon Magnus
December 20th, 2006 7:52 pmGreat collection. I always enjoy seeing different examples of CSS goodness! The art on those sites is nice as well.
Vasilis
December 20th, 2006 8:51 pmReally impressive designs! This list is another great resource for inspiration!
Thanks!
Brad Dickason
December 20th, 2006 8:56 pmDavid,
I believe that ‘CSS-based’ merely differentiates between the CSS and Flash wars that went down a few years back. For example, the gorgeous http://www.ampedesports.com/ uses CSS for 99% of layouts but still includes a bit of flash and html (tables) here and there, so I’m not sure… should it be allowed?
diggestiv
December 20th, 2006 9:36 pmWoooooow!
This sites are really very pleasant for the eye!
Great 4 inspiration!!
chicken
December 20th, 2006 10:03 pmdesigns are really nice
but how would i know because your CSS on
this site is messed up
dranus
December 20th, 2006 11:30 pmThis all looks like some WordPress themes. Very generic and derivative stuff.
daner
December 20th, 2006 11:42 pmIronic- how screwed up this page is nd they are recognizing good web site design…………….
Not working the way they want in IE6 nor IE7
Allan
December 20th, 2006 11:54 pm2006 has been a great year for CSS-based website. Congratulations to all and great compilation!
meshback
December 20th, 2006 11:55 pmdesigns are really nice
but how would i know because your CSS on
this site is messed up
Looks fine in firefox. Stop using ie7 and use a real browser, fool!
DJ
December 21st, 2006 1:17 amWow what that ! Please respect the standard ! IE7 is more standard as FF ! But the result suck ! And check your JS too :-)
undefined values :-(
Else a nice idea :-)
See you !
ubuntutaker
December 21st, 2006 1:19 amSome of these sites are plain inaccessible :(
They aren’t fully css-based
Tvorba stránok
December 21st, 2006 1:59 amGood selection… nice webpages.
Dave Davis
December 21st, 2006 3:42 amGreat list. Some there I think I would put after some others. Thanks for the compilation!
asdf
December 21st, 2006 3:48 amMediocre. All sites have the same layout, all they changed are the images.
Yankie
December 21st, 2006 4:11 am90% have the same aesthetic. Pretty Boring.
denisutku
December 21st, 2006 5:42 aminspiring list here.
i wish all of the sites were still the same, but some of them were changed. that makes the snapshots worthy.
tyler
December 21st, 2006 6:12 amfun list but makes me think more of illustrator skills than css skills.
Hotshot
December 21st, 2006 6:22 amThose are some amazing designs. Surprisingly, there were even some designs that I would use over my current one. I wonder if anyone reads these comments, eh?
ted
December 21st, 2006 7:46 amyour google adsense ads are in violation of their terms of service, you can’t place pix next to them.
Caitlin
December 21st, 2006 9:28 amJust noticed that my home page needed correcting. Cheers, Dan.
Dmitry Yakhnov
December 21st, 2006 9:47 amCool works!
tomasio
December 21st, 2006 3:46 pmI just relaunched my online portfolio, maybe you like it enough to put it on your list? anyway, i would be glad to hear the user opinions on the usability of my site. just post your comments in my kontakt-sektion. (in the moment the site is only german, sorry)
David Carrero Fdez-Baillo
December 21st, 2006 4:50 pmthat’s good design ;-)
note: Ahh you must kill the attach image for google adsense code, the new style don’t permit this from google :(
Michael
December 21st, 2006 8:22 pmVery impressive list. Mit den Websites kann man sich wochenlang beschäftigen :-) Michael
JanOS
December 21st, 2006 9:11 pmHell Yeah!!!
amazing!!
in css we the trust!!
Tom Rose
December 21st, 2006 9:37 pmI agree with Russell about overuse of tabs and gradiants in 2006. I’m guilty of this as well. I have a feeling that in a few years we’ll look back and laugh that all our websites looked the same.
Olivier Danchin
December 21st, 2006 9:51 pmThank you for including my website in it… but I will be fair play : my website is no CSS based… it’s full flash… sorry.
Nice selection anyway.
tomasio
December 21st, 2006 11:54 pmSorry, but banyoles ist rather average design. What’s good on this? The CSS-Code? *shrug*
deli dana
December 22nd, 2006 1:12 amHi I’m interesting in CSS but I’m not so good :(
I need a professional help :’(
I want to be ” CSS guru “
09
December 22nd, 2006 2:26 amvery nice!
Sam
December 21st, 2006 4:23 pmThis is a site that I’m putting up for contention http://surfcore.co.uk which use an advanced recipe of XHTML, CSS, java script and transparent png’s.
I hope you like…
Ken Ong
December 22nd, 2006 3:14 pmReally smashing and nice designs. Do you sell these templates? :)
blogunion
December 22nd, 2006 4:52 pmA good post for web designers.These templates looks very nice.
J!0X
December 22nd, 2006 8:15 pmYes, these designs are really useful to find new ideas and concepts. Thanks.
ilker
December 23rd, 2006 10:11 amInspired by the gorgeous examples above, my blog got a facelift too! http://ilkeryoldas.blogspot.com
AJ
December 23rd, 2006 3:59 pmWoW! This is great! Wonderful source of inspiration.
Laurens
December 24th, 2006 4:31 pmThanks for the list. It’s a nice compilation!
lost
December 25th, 2006 8:33 pmtoo many beaty for 1 post
sixoo
December 27th, 2006 4:24 amWonderfull.Thanks
doufian
December 28th, 2006 10:36 pmthank for this beauteful cites. css is a very good thing. you can do many things by it.
Matt Davies
December 29th, 2006 6:57 amGreat list. Keep up the good work!
Stardate
December 29th, 2006 11:48 pmNice list! Really like the ones that do not look like every other wordpress blog.
Amy
January 3rd, 2007 11:23 pmAll the images are broken! I wanted to share this link with my readers, can you fix it?
Travis
January 4th, 2007 11:03 pmNice list. You have excellent taste.
kri
January 6th, 2007 8:45 amCool list!!!!!!!
Listín
January 7th, 2007 8:15 amCan’t see the screenshots!
Is your image server down?
Birgit
January 8th, 2007 11:03 pmveeeeery nice collection… splendid!
nigi
January 9th, 2007 12:00 amgood,i like some…not all
Stu
January 10th, 2007 3:30 amThanks for the awesome review! So good to find a site with all the thumbnails of the sites and not just a list.
Ashok Sanghi
January 11th, 2007 5:16 pmIam a webdesigner from india, i never expected this much of talent in the and cretivity peoples having, iam stunned see these websites, really amaging websites, cool colors and great combinations.
holy chris
January 11th, 2007 11:30 pmbeautiful, beautiful, beautiful AMAZING!! I´m depressed now – thx
Richard Brown
January 14th, 2007 8:54 pmBeautiful sites maybe but not css based. Well this is in respect of one site anyway. The foxie.ru site is just images – placed in tables. It doesn’t even have alt tags. Waste of time and effort. It breaks if you try to make the images larger to read the text. The text is all images.
To put it bluntly I can’t say it is beautiful or css based. So one out of your 50 is not really what you say it is!
Rich
Joan
January 16th, 2007 12:26 amtomasio,
Banyoles.cat is a web of an administration and I believe that his design is impeccable if we it assimilate to others.
rupesh
January 17th, 2007 8:19 pmwhen i see this websites i am become a friend of css and i try to make this type website by Css really it is super
Regards
rupesh
Ian Conrad
January 18th, 2007 6:44 amwow, these are so amazing and colorful! I love CSS.
Deanzod
January 20th, 2007 10:49 pmAll good stuff
Mehul Patel
February 6th, 2007 12:45 amOutstanding :)
leonzack
February 14th, 2007 10:18 amseems good design but please don’t forget, there are a lot of people have bad connection speed! now i’m still research how to make beautiful design with so low of KB loaded just see my site on yodi.web.ugm.ac.id that’s my research so far
Yash
February 16th, 2007 1:03 amNice collection.I like some of them.but yes some are just plain images.Still lots of things to learn.
Meble
February 17th, 2007 1:21 amThanks for this very good article … I use this to my home work to school … Can I translate this with all comments and insert on my site? … Thanks
Ronald
March 3rd, 2007 2:46 amgood.
Very good page
Thanks.
Countryman
March 6th, 2007 3:43 pmA nice selection of Websites. some great desgigns. Just shows what is possible!
Damian
March 8th, 2007 7:37 amImpressive list of designs. Some design techniques are very interesting. I´m very glad that i found this site. I´m looking forward for the 50 beautiful css based web designs in 2007!
Cigna
March 10th, 2007 5:08 pmThis site is truly a great resource thanks for all your hard work
OG
March 13th, 2007 4:21 pmSehr inspirierende Seite mit vielen frischen Links – freue mich hier zu sein :)
richard from flobb
March 16th, 2007 2:53 amA fantastic source of inspiration for us all. I personally am a big fan of CSS
Giovambattista Fazioli
March 16th, 2007 10:26 pmAmazing!!
Idaho
March 16th, 2007 10:42 pmHi I thank you for a wonderful site. You have done very good job.
Ron Wolpa
March 20th, 2007 2:28 pmvery interesting design , clean , neat ,
my prejudice against css sites has vanished (some css sites are very basic)
cost
March 21st, 2007 11:38 pmI’d just like to thank you for taking the time to create this internet website. It has been extremely helpful
lordmarin
March 26th, 2007 8:13 pmBeautiful list :)
good work
Garcia
March 29th, 2007 7:58 amSeguro que estos diseños me motivan :D
add
March 31st, 2007 3:28 amromanians again :P there are a few good designers here…