45 Fresh, Clean and Impressive Designs
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.
5. Alex Buga – Graphic Designer
7. Design Disease – Feel my symptoms
12. Realizzazione siti web Viareggio, Studio grafico viareggio, Toscana
13. PISA Trekking – Aventura Levada a Sério
17. Niťárna Česká Třebová – příze pro vyšívání a pletení
18. Fresh news
19. Arcsin | Webbyrå
21. Galuppi’s in Pompano Beach for Wedding Receptions
23. sparklette.net
24. A-FILM
26. The Collective Commercial Works of Drew Europeo
28. Carbonmade: Your online portfolio.
29. luke stevens | design + consulting
34. sebdesign.eu | graphic and web design | online portfolio
35. Trojan Records
39. :. JUNTA DE FREGUESIA DE CASTELO BRANCO .:
40. Kloobik.org : retour à l’Open Source
41. kara burke illustrations : prints
45. Zvik.com Designs
Lee Rickler
March 5th, 2007 9:12 amMost of these sites look great but fail on usability!
Bloody good work though.
Christopher Scott
March 5th, 2007 10:21 amNice list. I can’t help but notice a lot of the sites are using the flourish/swirly style illustrations that seem so popular now.
bes
March 5th, 2007 10:55 amGreat!
Some sites are awesome!
Lucas Castro
March 5th, 2007 11:02 amGot smashed?
Really impressive designs, #15 and #23 are my fav.
Jonathan
March 5th, 2007 11:45 amYet 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.
Umbrae
March 5th, 2007 12:29 pmIncoming digg, sir.
Keith L. Dick
March 5th, 2007 12:34 pmThese all look very good and are creative but most of them remind me more of “Magazine Ads” than they do Website Themes…
Quakeulf
March 5th, 2007 1:14 pmI 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.
noname
March 5th, 2007 2:03 pmMost 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.
Andy Ford
March 5th, 2007 2:04 pmI’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.
Alex
March 5th, 2007 2:11 pmThanks a lot for the list. Site have truly different style but all look good.
Romee
March 5th, 2007 3:14 pmThe Disco site was not proparly designed. Just try to mouseover the main banner, and you will see the glow that is wrong.
add
March 5th, 2007 4:18 pmPINK is the new obsession…
Victor
March 5th, 2007 4:26 pmYeah! That is cool! Thanx!
OverZero.it
March 5th, 2007 5:32 pmYou 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!
Ivan Minic
March 5th, 2007 5:38 pmReally great mix :)
Medford
March 5th, 2007 6:19 pmAlot 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).
Conrad
March 5th, 2007 6:29 pmGreat collection well done!
theonlydrayk
March 5th, 2007 7:19 pmImpressive,
good inspiration.
loops
March 5th, 2007 8:06 pmNice collection. Thanks
Lucian Marin
March 5th, 2007 8:13 pmGreat, but not so great. None of these sites are usable. :(
Stuart
March 5th, 2007 8:49 pmIn 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.
Tobbi
March 5th, 2007 8:53 pmSome of them look very nice :)
Adam Alyan
March 5th, 2007 9:01 pmNot all clean. But its always inspirational to look at creative examples.
Thanks for the effort..
lawton chiles
March 5th, 2007 9:03 pmDarn it. My work is not eye-catching enough. Most of these makes you stop and stare.
Chris James
March 5th, 2007 10:02 pmGreat list
I think for the first time ever, i called a website beautiful, when i saw sparklette.net
Jasper
March 5th, 2007 10:09 pmI 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 :(
Joe Public
March 5th, 2007 10:24 pmHorrible………. Shhh…. don’t tell anyone “Web Design is not Graphic Design”!
Designs like these are good indication that CRASH 2.0 is approaching………
Marino
March 5th, 2007 11:07 pmCool list & nice post! Great designs. ;)
Toubeauty
March 5th, 2007 11:10 pmHi, I’m the owner and creator of Toubeauty.com n°18
to be honnest inspiration came from
http://www.kineda.com
http://summer.tnvacation.com and of course smashmagazine the year before – thanks a lot
Bartek
March 5th, 2007 11:56 pmGood stuff there. Very inspirational.
Ryan
March 6th, 2007 1:13 amNow these are some nice looking designs. Good job. :D
Boicozine
March 6th, 2007 1:32 amI 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.
Terinea Tech Tips
March 6th, 2007 2:30 amWhat a fantastic collection of web designs. Hope I can produce something of that quality one day.
Tina Love
March 6th, 2007 8:14 amMy fav is stocktemple.com
It’s well designed and what beautiful use of colors! How could you go wrong!
ewancoo
March 6th, 2007 10:54 amNice list. Good to see one of the finalists in the SEO contest in the Philippines :)
tony
March 6th, 2007 2:30 pmOliver we are out of easter eggs!! Nice sites.
Oliver
March 6th, 2007 2:37 pmI need eggs. Check your laundry
Brandon
March 6th, 2007 5:18 pmI 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.
Dean
March 6th, 2007 7:17 pmNice list. Although the designs look lean and impressive I don’t think they are very intuitive. They look more form friendly than function friendly.
gaddum
March 6th, 2007 7:43 pmQUOTE: “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!
yawning
March 6th, 2007 7:49 pmOh my gawd! Swirly florals and stars and arrows and circles… So talentless. My eyes are turning to stone.
anthony
March 7th, 2007 1:40 amthey are great
wolkanca
March 7th, 2007 2:22 amthanks. realy great sites
Huh
March 7th, 2007 7:36 amUm, 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.”
Nibbler
March 7th, 2007 8:53 pmWhile 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.
Rich
March 9th, 2007 8:37 pmVery nice collection there – It is how we are trying to design several sites right now – crisp, clean and uncluttered.
Top marks for this!
Blue Buffalo
March 10th, 2007 4:42 amWhat a great list. There are definitely some excellent, top-notch designers out there. Thanks for the nice shots!
Stephen
March 12th, 2007 4:16 pmWow! That’s a great list of Fresh sites.
Wender da Silva Souza
March 16th, 2007 4:54 amNice List… congratulation !!!
ahmet selim
April 1st, 2007 9:56 pmvery nice works.congratulations for every designer
somehow
April 25th, 2007 2:50 pmaverage sites that I’ve somehow see
Mac
May 14th, 2007 1:25 amThanks, great list :)
Goliat
May 14th, 2007 4:38 pmHi,
cool list you have here!
Diseño Grafico y Multimedia
May 25th, 2007 7:41 pmGoods works :)
riki
June 5th, 2007 10:34 pmVerey interesting web design on more this layouts. Especialy green Urban../Thanx for infos. Richard
Arman
June 13th, 2007 9:09 amcool designs….inspiring
Adrian
June 14th, 2007 11:03 pmAwesome list, and awesome sites, you can clearly see that vector-based 2.0ish style on most of them.
#15 is waaaay to awesome.
Digital Street
June 19th, 2007 5:55 pmAnother great list of sites.
Thanks for sharing with us
WD-NYC designer
June 20th, 2007 12:30 amI like the design very much, clean and very creative.
TBD
June 25th, 2007 9:52 pmNice collection of sites.
Inspirational.
Art Guy
June 26th, 2007 1:59 pmvery inspiring list, wish someday my blog can be in a top list. (of anything haha)
Trek
July 16th, 2007 2:56 pmAt 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.
Iksanika
July 16th, 2007 9:59 pmThe 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 )))
Seed
July 21st, 2007 5:58 pmhi,
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.
Jeff Adams
July 23rd, 2007 6:23 amwow this is REALLY inspiring!!
Deviantz
July 23rd, 2007 4:01 pmThis is really great!!
erwin
August 15th, 2007 12:59 amNice design overall ..
Moveis
August 20th, 2007 8:09 amNice list. My favorite website is ” Urban Originals “
Kyle
August 22nd, 2007 5:04 amWow, The Ituloy Angsulong Experience design is really amazing. Well done with this design showcase.
custom web design
September 27th, 2007 10:00 pm“luke stevens | design + consulting” realy impressive.
lawoman
November 6th, 2007 4:44 amThis showcase is a great inspiration. awesome job.
Web design Bulgaria
November 13th, 2007 4:47 pmWow, yet another sweet list. I always wonder how Smashing Magazine gather that smashing list of things.