Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.
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
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
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
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
45. Zvik.com Designs
Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine (www.smashingmagazine.com), an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.
(2 votes, average: 2.50 out of 5)
Loading ...- 73 Comments
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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.
- 3March 5th, 2007 10:55 am
Great!
Some sites are awesome! - 4March 5th, 2007 11:02 am
Got smashed?
Really impressive designs, #15 and #23 are my fav. - 5March 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.
- 6March 5th, 2007 12:29 pm
Incoming digg, sir.
- 7March 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…
- 8March 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.
- 9March 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.
- 10March 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.
- 11March 5th, 2007 2:11 pm
Thanks a lot for the list. Site have truly different style but all look good.
- 12March 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.
- 13March 5th, 2007 4:18 pm
PINK is the new obsession…
- 14March 5th, 2007 4:26 pm
Yeah! That is cool! Thanx!
- 15March 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! - 16March 5th, 2007 5:38 pm
Really great mix :)
- 17March 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).
- 18March 5th, 2007 6:29 pm
Great collection well done!
- 19March 5th, 2007 7:19 pm
Impressive,
good inspiration.
- 20March 5th, 2007 8:06 pm
Nice collection. Thanks
- 21March 5th, 2007 8:13 pm
Great, but not so great. None of these sites are usable. :(
- 22March 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.
- 23March 5th, 2007 8:53 pm
Some of them look very nice :)
- 24March 5th, 2007 9:01 pm
Not all clean. But its always inspirational to look at creative examples.
Thanks for the effort..
- 25March 5th, 2007 9:03 pm
Darn it. My work is not eye-catching enough. Most of these makes you stop and stare.
- 26March 5th, 2007 10:02 pm
Great list
I think for the first time ever, i called a website beautiful, when i saw sparklette.net
- 27March 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 :(
- 28March 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………
- 29March 5th, 2007 11:07 pm
Cool list & nice post! Great designs. ;)
- 30March 5th, 2007 11:10 pm
Hi, 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 - 31March 5th, 2007 11:56 pm
Good stuff there. Very inspirational.
- 32March 6th, 2007 1:13 am
Now these are some nice looking designs. Good job. :D
- 33March 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.
- 34March 6th, 2007 2:30 am
What a fantastic collection of web designs. Hope I can produce something of that quality one day.
- 35March 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! - 36March 6th, 2007 10:54 am
Nice list. Good to see one of the finalists in the SEO contest in the Philippines :)
- 37March 6th, 2007 2:30 pm
Oliver we are out of easter eggs!! Nice sites.
- 38March 6th, 2007 2:37 pm
I need eggs. Check your laundry
- 39March 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.
- 40March 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.
- 41March 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!
- 42March 6th, 2007 7:49 pm
Oh my gawd! Swirly florals and stars and arrows and circles… So talentless. My eyes are turning to stone.
- 43March 7th, 2007 1:40 am
they are great
- 44March 7th, 2007 2:22 am
thanks. realy great sites
- 45March 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.”
- 46March 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.
- 47March 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!
- 48March 10th, 2007 4:42 am
What a great list. There are definitely some excellent, top-notch designers out there. Thanks for the nice shots!
- 49March 12th, 2007 4:16 pm
Wow! That’s a great list of Fresh sites.
- 50March 16th, 2007 4:54 am
Nice List… congratulation !!!
- 51April 1st, 2007 9:56 pm
very nice works.congratulations for every designer
- 52April 25th, 2007 2:50 pm
average sites that I’ve somehow see
- 53May 14th, 2007 1:25 am
Thanks, great list :)
- 54May 14th, 2007 4:38 pm
Hi,
cool list you have here! - 55May 25th, 2007 7:41 pm
Goods works :)
- 56June 5th, 2007 10:34 pm
Verey interesting web design on more this layouts. Especialy green Urban../Thanx for infos. Richard
- 57June 13th, 2007 9:09 am
cool designs….inspiring
- 58June 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.
- 59June 19th, 2007 5:55 pm
Another great list of sites.
Thanks for sharing with us - 60June 20th, 2007 12:30 am
I like the design very much, clean and very creative.
- 61June 25th, 2007 9:52 pm
Nice collection of sites.
Inspirational. - 62June 26th, 2007 1:59 pm
very inspiring list, wish someday my blog can be in a top list. (of anything haha)
- 63July 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.
- 64July 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 )))
- 65July 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.
- 66July 23rd, 2007 6:23 am
wow this is REALLY inspiring!!
- 67July 23rd, 2007 4:01 pm
This is really great!!
- 68August 15th, 2007 12:59 am
Nice design overall ..
- 69August 20th, 2007 8:09 am
Nice list. My favorite website is ” Urban Originals “
- 70August 22nd, 2007 5:04 am
Wow, The Ituloy Angsulong Experience design is really amazing. Well done with this design showcase.
- 71September 27th, 2007 10:00 pm
“luke stevens | design + consulting” realy impressive.
- 72November 6th, 2007 4:44 am
This showcase is a great inspiration. awesome job.
- 73November 13th, 2007 4:47 pm
Wow, yet another sweet list. I always wonder how Smashing Magazine gather that smashing list of things.
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Most of these sites look great but fail on usability!
Bloody good work though.