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45 Fresh, Clean and Impressive Designs

By Smashing Editorial, March 5th, 2007 in Design Showcase | 209 Comments | Forum

Sometimes it’s just amazing to see, which level of usability, legibility and visual appeal can be achieved using some basic design techniques. In fact, some talented web-developers manage to deliver powerful, functional and gorgeous web-design in “look-and-feel”-style, which is easy to use and nice to see. Recently we’ve listed 50 Beautiful CSS-based web-design of 2006 and chosen some of the most beautiful and inspiring dark web-designs. Now we’ve selected 45 more fresh, clean and impressive designs. Let’s take a look. Links checked: June/30 2008 - several links and screenshots have been deleted.

2. - VG DESIGN -

5. Alex Buga - Graphic Designer

7. Design Disease - Feel my symptoms

8. Luis Alarcón, Blog

9. Scrapbook Your Memories

10. Lost and Found | The Found Bin

11. Yellowlane | So much time. So little to do.

12. Realizzazione siti web Viareggio, Studio grafico viareggio, Toscana

13. PISA Trekking - Aventura Levada a Sério

16. Cube Club Chemnitz

17. Niťárna Česká Třebová - příze pro vyšívání a pletení

18. Fresh news

19. Arcsin | Webbyrå

21. Galuppi’s in Pompano Beach for Wedding Receptions

22. scpgt | matt northam

23. sparklette.net

24. A-FILM

26. The Collective Commercial Works of Drew Europeo

28. Carbonmade: Your online portfolio.

29. luke stevens | design + consulting

32. Disco - Mac Disc Burning

34. sebdesign.eu | graphic and web design | online portfolio

35. Trojan Records

36. CaraWilliams.com.au

38. Café Rouge - Restaurant - Bar - Café

39. :. JUNTA DE FREGUESIA DE CASTELO BRANCO .:

40. Kloobik.org : retour à l’Open Source

41. kara burke illustrations : prints

42. Infiniti Mixed Media

45. Zvik.com Designs

Published in Design Showcase, March 5th, 2007
Tags: inspiration, showcases

1.

Lee Rickler (March 5th, 2007, 9:12 am)

Most of these sites look great but fail on usability!

Bloody good work though.
2.

Christopher Scott (March 5th, 2007, 10:21 am)

Nice list. I can’t help but notice a lot of the sites are using the flourish/swirly style illustrations that seem so popular now.
3.

bes (March 5th, 2007, 10:55 am)

Great!
Some sites are awesome!
4.

Lucas Castro (March 5th, 2007, 11:02 am)

Got smashed?
Really impressive designs, #15 and #23 are my fav.
5.

Jonathan (March 5th, 2007, 11:45 am)

Yet another fine list of designs. Great collection. All these sites though, seem to have more of an art-sy style rather than any professionalism involved with it.

I’d love to see a great list of professional designs that are attractive but still innovative.
6.

Umbrae (March 5th, 2007, 12:29 pm)

Incoming digg, sir.
7.

Keith L. Dick (March 5th, 2007, 12:34 pm)

These all look very good and are creative but most of them remind me more of “Magazine Ads” than they do Website Themes…
8.

Quakeulf (March 5th, 2007, 1:14 pm)

I was blown away by some of the site designs. Goddamn my site is boring and uninteresting compared to those. :/

Really great work, even though accessability really isn’t WCAG 3 stars for most of them.
9.

noname (March 5th, 2007, 2:03 pm)

Most of these are really not CLEAN, but very cluttered and busy.

Most of these also FAIL on accessibility.

Pretty, yea, most of them. But who ever MUPPET call em USABLE and CLEAN should really find a clue what USABLE and CLEAN actually means.
10.

Andy Ford (March 5th, 2007, 2:04 pm)

I’ll admit - when I saw the title on Digg, I thought “this’ll be a bunch of above average sites that I’ve somehow seem before…” But they are all terrific designs and I’ve only seen a small handful of them.

There was *something* that made me click on #18 right off the bat - I couldn’t help but notice they’re violating the new google adsense TOS by putting pics next to the ads.

Anyway… nice list - I’ll be coming back if I’m feeling a little low on inspiration.
11.

Alex (March 5th, 2007, 2:11 pm)

Thanks a lot for the list. Site have truly different style but all look good.
12.

Romee (March 5th, 2007, 3:14 pm)

The Disco site was not proparly designed. Just try to mouseover the main banner, and you will see the glow that is wrong.
13.

add (March 5th, 2007, 4:18 pm)

PINK is the new obsession…
14.

Victor (March 5th, 2007, 4:26 pm)

Yeah! That is cool! Thanx!
15.

OverZero.it (March 5th, 2007, 5:32 pm)

You mixed a lot of different styles here.
This can be useful as exercise to associate styles to different kind of project.
Thank you very much!
16.

Ivan Minic (March 5th, 2007, 5:38 pm)

Really great mix :)
17.

Medford (March 5th, 2007, 6:19 pm)

Alot of talent in the list. Although there is so many elements of the designs that are re-used, backgrounds, drop shadow, destressed and scratched effects, Linears Gradient, Floral swirls, Beams of Light. We are at a point in Web 2.0 / CSS based design when there are trends developing which people like and reuse. The only issue is things start looking the same for better or worse..my own site included (designed a year ago).
18.

Conrad (March 5th, 2007, 6:29 pm)

Great collection well done!
19.

theonlydrayk (March 5th, 2007, 7:19 pm)

Impressive,

good inspiration.
20.

loops (March 5th, 2007, 8:06 pm)

Nice collection. Thanks
21.

Lucian Marin (March 5th, 2007, 8:13 pm)

Great, but not so great. None of these sites are usable. :(
22.

Stuart (March 5th, 2007, 8:49 pm)

In what way are any of these designs ‘clean’? They’re overly-detailed, busy, and of the current trend in web design, but they’re far from clean.
23.

Tobbi (March 5th, 2007, 8:53 pm)

Some of them look very nice :)
24.

Adam Alyan (March 5th, 2007, 9:01 pm)

Not all clean. But its always inspirational to look at creative examples.

Thanks for the effort..
25.

lawton chiles (March 5th, 2007, 9:03 pm)

Darn it. My work is not eye-catching enough. Most of these makes you stop and stare.
26.

Chris James (March 5th, 2007, 10:02 pm)

Great list

I think for the first time ever, i called a website beautiful, when i saw sparklette.net
27.

Jasper (March 5th, 2007, 10:09 pm)

I know it’s being done to death right now, but I love the swirly floral patterns! A lot of nice graphic design on those sites. Unforunately, I’m a terrible designer, so these lists always give me an inferiority complex :(
28.

Joe Public (March 5th, 2007, 10:24 pm)

Horrible………. Shhh…. don’t tell anyone “Web Design is not Graphic Design”!

Designs like these are good indication that CRASH 2.0 is approaching………
29.

Marino (March 5th, 2007, 11:07 pm)

Cool list & nice post! Great designs. ;)
30.

Toubeauty (March 5th, 2007, 11:10 pm)

Hi, I’m the owner and creator of Toubeauty.com n°18

to be honnest inspiration came from
Link [www.kineda.com]
Link [summer.tnvacation.com] and of course smashmagazine the year before - thanks a lot
31.

Bartek (March 5th, 2007, 11:56 pm)

Good stuff there. Very inspirational.
32.

Ryan (March 6th, 2007, 1:13 am)

Now these are some nice looking designs. Good job. :D
33.

Boicozine (March 6th, 2007, 1:32 am)

I love Smashing magazine but your taste in website design seems slightly dubious. Most of these look like they have been produced by Photoshop monkeys not Graphic Designers. There’s too much going on to captivate the viewers attention. Nice photoshop techniques but most seem poorly designed.
34.

Terinea Tech Tips (March 6th, 2007, 2:30 am)

What a fantastic collection of web designs. Hope I can produce something of that quality one day.
35.

Tina Love (March 6th, 2007, 8:14 am)

My fav is stocktemple.com
It’s well designed and what beautiful use of colors! How could you go wrong!
36.

ewancoo (March 6th, 2007, 10:54 am)

Nice list. Good to see one of the finalists in the SEO contest in the Philippines :)
37.

tony (March 6th, 2007, 2:30 pm)

Oliver we are out of easter eggs!! Nice sites.
38.

Oliver (March 6th, 2007, 2:37 pm)

I need eggs. Check your laundry
39.

Brandon (March 6th, 2007, 5:18 pm)

I don’t care what people say. As a general rule, ‘clean’ is a pretty good descriptor. Lot’s of color! Some of these would make great inspiration for case studies.
40.

Dean (March 6th, 2007, 7:17 pm)

Nice list. Although the designs look lean and impressive I don’t think they are very intuitive. They look more form friendly than function friendly.
41.

gaddum (March 6th, 2007, 7:43 pm)

QUOTE: “I love Smashing magazine but your taste in website design seems slightly dubious. Most of these look like they have been produced by Photoshop monkeys not Graphic Designers. There’s too much going on to captivate the viewers attention. Nice photoshop techniques but most seem poorly designed.”

I agree! It seems fairly common that people are impressed whenever they see really busy designs, which upon careful examination are just almost random shapes slapped together to make a “design”. Indeed, a lot of these seem to have been made by “Photoshop monkeys” and not graphic designers or anyone with any real talent.

Anyone could take photoshop brushes and *click click click*—an “impressive” design like above!
42.

yawning (March 6th, 2007, 7:49 pm)

Oh my gawd! Swirly florals and stars and arrows and circles… So talentless. My eyes are turning to stone.
43.

anthony (March 7th, 2007, 1:40 am)

they are great
44.

wolkanca (March 7th, 2007, 2:22 am)

thanks. realy great sites
45.

Huh (March 7th, 2007, 7:36 am)

Um, yuck. Whoever picked these 45 websites has terrible, unsophisticated taste!

While some are not too bad, many of these are not “fresh, clean, and impressive.”

Perhaps the title of this article should have been “45 UNUSUAL website designs.” That would be more accurate.

Or better yet: “45 website designs that I like because I am ignorant.”
46.

Nibbler (March 7th, 2007, 8:53 pm)

While I agree that the artwork on most sites looks great, I doubt about their functionality. I think there must be defined a differences between a good artwork and a good designed website. Most of them would look great on posters and other prints, but don’t work as a website because mostly the banners takes in half of the page, or there’s too much content on them to have a decent overview.
47.

Rich (March 9th, 2007, 8:37 pm)

Very nice collection there - It is how we are trying to design several sites right now - crisp, clean and uncluttered.

Top marks for this!
48.

Blue Buffalo (March 10th, 2007, 4:42 am)

What a great list. There are definitely some excellent, top-notch designers out there. Thanks for the nice shots!
49.

Stephen (March 12th, 2007, 4:16 pm)

Wow! That’s a great list of Fresh sites.
50.

Wender da Silva Souza (March 16th, 2007, 4:54 am)

Nice List… congratulation !!!
51.

ahmet selim (April 1st, 2007, 9:56 pm)

very nice works.congratulations for every designer
52.

somehow (April 25th, 2007, 2:50 pm)

average sites that I’ve somehow see
53.

Mac (May 14th, 2007, 1:25 am)

Thanks, great list :)
54.

Goliat (May 14th, 2007, 4:38 pm)

Hi,
cool list you have here!
55.

Diseño Grafico y Multimedia (May 25th, 2007, 7:41 pm)

Goods works :)
56.

riki (June 5th, 2007, 10:34 pm)

Verey interesting web design on more this layouts. Especialy green Urban../Thanx for infos. Richard
57.

Arman (June 13th, 2007, 9:09 am)

cool designs….inspiring
58.

Adrian (June 14th, 2007, 11:03 pm)

Awesome list, and awesome sites, you can clearly see that vector-based 2.0ish style on most of them.

#15 is waaaay to awesome.
59.

Digital Street (June 19th, 2007, 5:55 pm)

Another great list of sites.
Thanks for sharing with us
60.

WD-NYC designer (June 20th, 2007, 12:30 am)

I like the design very much, clean and very creative.
61.

TBD (June 25th, 2007, 9:52 pm)

Nice collection of sites.
Inspirational.
62.

Art Guy (June 26th, 2007, 1:59 pm)

very inspiring list, wish someday my blog can be in a top list. (of anything haha)
63.

Trek (July 16th, 2007, 2:56 pm)

At first glance I thought these were wordpress themes and I gasped. Still, even though they aren’t, the css designs are just damn sick. I have tried to teach myself design like this numerous times, but in the end I always end up outsourcing.

Designers are very hard to come by these days.
64.

Iksanika (July 16th, 2007, 9:59 pm)

The pics look nice, I would say rather sweet….

I liked the picture with a girl and a butterflies - it is warm and pleasant - the idea was as I believe - winter (girl)- spring (butterflies) :)))

that are just my thoughts anyways )))
65.

Seed (July 21st, 2007, 5:58 pm)

hi,

Nice list. I can’t help but notice a lot of the sites are using the flourish/swirly style illustrations that seem so popular now.
66.

Jeff Adams (July 23rd, 2007, 6:23 am)

wow this is REALLY inspiring!!
67.

Deviantz (July 23rd, 2007, 4:01 pm)

This is really great!!
68.

Victoire (July 26th, 2007, 4:14 pm)

This site Link [www.12flores.es] is clean and elegant too
69.

erwin (August 15th, 2007, 12:59 am)

Nice design overall ..
70.

Moveis (August 20th, 2007, 8:09 am)

Nice list. My favorite website is ” Urban Originals “
71.

Kyle (August 22nd, 2007, 5:04 am)

Wow, The Ituloy Angsulong Experience design is really amazing. Well done with this design showcase.
72.

custom web design (September 27th, 2007, 10:00 pm)

“luke stevens | design + consulting” realy impressive.
73.

lawoman (November 6th, 2007, 4:44 am)

This showcase is a great inspiration. awesome job.
74.

Web design Bulgaria (November 13th, 2007, 4:47 pm)

Wow, yet another sweet list. I always wonder how Smashing Magazine gather that smashing list of things.