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 Links checked: May/29 2008 – 5 outdated designs deleted.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
gilles
April 1st, 2007 11:47 pmIt’s very great!
Jamessy
April 4th, 2007 12:53 amFirst class designs and sites – there really is no excuse for using tables these days!
bedava
April 13th, 2007 3:36 pmThey are really nice, photoshop and css they both perfect.
Mikl
April 15th, 2007 8:15 amUne grande partie de ces design sont magnifique, mais il y en a qui n’y ont pas vraiment leurs places… Il existe sur le web vraiment plus beau que cela en design XHTML/CSS.
En tout cas, merci pour la liste, qui peut etre une excellente source d’inspiration…
jim
April 16th, 2007 10:46 pmThe sites shown here are visually appealing. The use of css to handle the layout, graphics, backgrounds, links is very well handled. The only issue is the css over takes the message and clouds the content. Sometimes simplicity can speak volumes. Our initial designs for our firms site looked very similar to all the ones shown here. Is that a coincidence. I don’t think so. The web-designer was referencing these sites for layout ideas. I think that is common amongst many designers these days. There is so much out there that looks fantastic, that one feels the urge to do it themself. Most web 2.0 sites look the same. I think we can all agree on that.
Rahim
April 17th, 2007 6:12 pmGreat list, all very Sexy and informative!
pete86
April 21st, 2007 10:31 pmNice list! Similar gallery is also here.
Sachin
April 25th, 2007 2:05 pmGreat , i shocked by desinging list. Very informative
jon
April 26th, 2007 3:29 amIt only took me 4 months to find this. Very nice work, thank you.
all the best, jon
The Pageman
April 28th, 2007 5:16 ammind-boggling list! truly an inspiration! thanks for putting this up!
erika Rodriguez
April 29th, 2007 1:23 amhi! can you say me, where i can buy your magazine.
I live in Puebla, mexico.
i dont’ know if you sell your magazine in my country.
it’s very interesting.
thank you
cocoliso
May 2nd, 2007 10:36 amThis is going to give me some great ideas. Thanks for your work.
How’d you come across these sites anyways?
John
May 2nd, 2007 10:49 pmsimply great stuff yar……………
johnthomasedison
May 2nd, 2007 10:51 pmtnx for givng this fantastic listing. its really a great effort to pick the pearls from the sea……
Adam Alyan
May 3rd, 2007 6:14 amReally great collection, keep it up
ali kaplan
May 8th, 2007 1:26 amdefinetly wonderfull designs,
i guess that “who are the designers of this websites ?”
Bielizna
May 10th, 2007 1:46 amVery impressive list, especially I like “haveamint.com” you can almost feel the freshness.
Luciano Vento
May 12th, 2007 8:20 amGracias por la expocisión..muy inspiradora.
Meble biurowe
May 12th, 2007 10:35 pmNice Page with interesting comments. useful to build a new site
Steve
May 18th, 2007 11:07 pmGreat resource- however -
where are e-commerce designs?? Sure these are all amazing but why hasn’t e-commerce embraced CSS based designs?
Corporate are finally getting there (ESPN, Sprint etc) but still not so many big online retailers are using this.
Someone please post links to these – as getting clients to invest in CSS based designs for e-commerce is still near impossible.
Calif
May 19th, 2007 11:26 ambest site of its kind :-)
Youzer
May 22nd, 2007 11:12 pmthis video and movie site has a good css and ajax combination
I hope you like it…
link
David Behan
May 23rd, 2007 5:46 pmThat’s a really great list. Thanks for sharing. Really like the vibrant designs collection. Rgds, Dave
ahmanz
May 25th, 2007 10:29 amso well-cssed sites!:)
valerie
May 30th, 2007 1:18 pmHi,wow thats a lot of links,it must took you forever!This is very interesting,i love your topics.you sound very educated when it comes to these kinds of things.Me,im just learning css and html,it can be very confusing!Keep at it.Feel free to leave me an e mail sometime:)
Tim
June 11th, 2007 11:33 pmAwesome work and very inspirational (“,)
duluoz
June 22nd, 2007 4:57 pmAmazing stuff here!
Ron Wolpa
June 24th, 2007 3:39 amThat´s right , this site is 100% flash (http://olivier.danchin.neuf.fr/pages/home.htm)
there is nothing to do with CSS ;
by the looks of it the list needs revamping.;
Crsistina Mailat
June 29th, 2007 5:53 pmIndeed a great list, a 2007 update will be great. I wish some of my websites to be in this list :D.
Peter
July 1st, 2007 6:08 amBeautiful sites and compiling them like this makes for a useful inspirational reference, looking forward to 2007′s collection.
Maybe a separate Web 2.0 collection of sites might also be on the cards??
buzovski
July 1st, 2007 5:05 pmGreat list ! Amazing. Komodio media is really cool :)
Jennifer Lee
July 6th, 2007 12:23 pmAwesome list! My understanding of css is still in the baby stage, but hopefully I will gain enough experience to make websites as great as these!
Pierre
July 7th, 2007 11:41 amThank you very much for this great list.
I hope to get one day one of my websites in such a listing :P
Pierre – From France
DeadLy
July 8th, 2007 7:46 amvery nice collection.. Thanks smashingmagazine :)
Roman
July 8th, 2007 7:43 pmInspiring! A good material to learn from.
raj
July 9th, 2007 9:49 pmwow!!! nice collection of CSS based websites. the best thing is that you will find this website on top position (keyword: css based websites)
thanx great links
Robert
July 11th, 2007 2:11 pmI will go home crying, these designs make my dreams worth nothing. Would you make a list for year 2007?
Good post.
Buzz
July 14th, 2007 7:43 amYeah, I feel like Robert, a new list (or an update of this one) would be really great ;)
Fabio
July 19th, 2007 5:30 pmI like most of the designs, but there are no big commercial sites here. You should focus more on designs that have advertising on their sites so that we could get inspiration on how to set up a site with advertising too, it’s not easy.
Lanad
July 21st, 2007 6:13 pmhi,
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.
Kim Harris
July 26th, 2007 9:30 pmOk i like the designs, any chance of a real elegant one that i could use for free.
Web design is not my thing but was asked to set up a website to help people who have been abused.
I would love to know how you guys create such beautiful images, i know what i want but cant design it figred i am alcking the brains so i am going the cheeky route.
Best wishes
Kim
adhi
August 6th, 2007 6:24 pmamaizing css, great..
thanks for share
sebo
August 9th, 2007 7:59 pmGreat list, some i never saw before!
check out a new css gallery with very high selection standards
Emre
August 17th, 2007 5:05 pmGreat web sites..
im suden
August 21st, 2007 5:55 amOf course, I’m jealous that my visual and CSS skills are just not up to the job, but I find a lot of these sites visually confusing, samey and downright difficult to use. They look pretty, but I wouldn’t want to navigate them for any length of time.
A lot of them don’t strike me as particularly accessible; lots of text rendered as images, for example.
I guess it depends on how you define beauty – but I’d like to see a top 10 of accessible, usable sites.
Christoph
August 22nd, 2007 8:00 pmNice collection, but I am not listed. ;)
Dainsiderz
August 30th, 2007 11:10 pmGreat concept…
An Artistic way of approach for a business promotion.
No craps, An eyes to relax while surfing.
Keep up the good work…
Bee Dainsiderz
DXB
GercekDost
August 31st, 2007 3:48 ami’m intreasting in your theme,but i don’t know is the theme support chinese?your theme it nice,thank you
brad
September 1st, 2007 7:59 pmReally great !
Rajaraman ramanujam
September 4th, 2007 4:14 pmreally a good things r here
magneti
September 7th, 2007 10:22 pmGreat collection of quality designs!
Dave
September 20th, 2007 12:49 amFound this article while searching for some design ideas. I like the design by Olivier. Simple design and affective use of white (purple) space.
Fred
September 20th, 2007 7:14 pmWoOo great list Sir, a great new source of inspiration for me, thanks ;)
Vitali
September 21st, 2007 4:47 pmGreat list, i’d wish i can create something like one of these..
Rich
September 23rd, 2007 9:08 amA great collection of sites! Nice Work
bebek
September 26th, 2007 9:01 amThey are all great but a few of them looked absolutely excellent to me and those are the ones that I am probably gonna use for my new upcoming small projects. Thanks very much.
arkoudos
October 12th, 2007 10:32 pm@im suden, you are totally right.
Thats why i love watching this sites, but when it comes to work, i prefer Facebook – type usable sites…
Baltic
November 21st, 2007 6:36 pmI think this material are very useful for new ideas. In Foxie and Kineda i found somethink new. Respect :)
isk
November 22nd, 2007 7:08 amI`m happy, now website can be like a piece of art. There is some new design navigation ideas. Nice
Admin
November 23rd, 2007 8:12 amI wish our website looks as awesome as those you selected.
Wonderful collection.
Keeping back for more.
Chase
November 23rd, 2007 4:00 amHey thank you so much for putting in all the effort to make this article. I show my clients this post all the time to help show them the possibilities of web design and what the current trend is out there. I have found this article extremely helpful and it has helped me recently land a new client. Thanks again!!!
Stop Foreclosure
November 24th, 2007 8:57 pmnice work, I have been playing around with Photoshop and learning.
Instafreak
December 5th, 2007 11:15 pmOk, we talking about nice design here, webdesign, and without no doubt this is nice collection of well designed web sites.
Unfortunately some of this sites are miscoded, some of them badly miscoded…
I have feeling that visitors of smashingmagazine.com have strong sense for correctly written code, so I was surprised when I saw sites without doctype ;(