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blah, blah, blah …
Sorry but a lot of these designs are not very ‘inspirational’ at all plus I’m sure that you’ve featured quite a few of them already.

Although I love lists like this, I will agree that I am not very inspired by them either. It’s not just you, lately CSS Mania and The Best Design showcases have not been inspiring as well. Also a lot of these designs I have seen on those two showcases.

I need something different, some that really inspires me. I know when I am inspired, because I will open up Fireworks and start to create something. None of these make me want to create something.

But like I said it is not just you.

Nice

Great list as usual guys! You guys always put so much work into your posts and I’ve never posted a reply so I thought I’d take the opportunity to say thanks for all the hard work and keep it up!

Sorry guys….these are good as a gallery, but inspiration?
Not one of them made me Open Link in New Tab…

Very nice ones…

What about mysite (web20) it should be in the list 2….
Dutch Nature website

;)

What percentage of these are fixed-width designs, and why does there seem to be a growing trend in that direction? Personally, I don’t really want to look at a page that is 750 pixels wide on my monitor that is 1920 pixels wide.

I totally disagree with people saying that these aren’t inspirational! Just because they don’t make you run off to use Photoshop doesn’t mean that they wont prove useful in the future. I bookmark all these posts, and refer back to them when I have a site to build and I’m short of ideas.

I appreciate the time and effort that the SM team put into these. I also find it fascinating to see what the current trend is for cutting-edge web design.

I strongly suspect that many of the people who slam these posts (and CSS galleries too) only do so because they know that they can never create such stunning designs themselves.

Keep them coming guys! :)

Nice collection! But if 60+ beautiful designs is not enough inspiration check out the largest design collection at http://www.screenalicio.us with more than 8900 screenshots.

The problem with 9/10 of these designs is that they are far too cluttered with a bunch of “pretty graphics” thrown about. When I see a site like that, it doesn’t encourage me away from clicking x on my Firefox tab anymore than a very badly designed website, because I immediately recognize the design was created by someone who thinks pretty little shiny stuff attracts me like a fish and I won’t find any more better content there than in most places.

Boring…
Sorry to say, these are not very “inspirational” at all.
I don’t mean to be overly nasty or negative, but I have to say I expect better from Smashing Magazine! I love Smashing Magazine… but this story really stinks. Where is the fun? Where is the variety? Where is the uniqueness? Well… where is the “inspiration”? This simply looks like a gallery of screen shots (and not too much variety at that).
You just did something like this in May (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/05/21/60-elegant-and-visually-appealling-designs/), why do it again so soon? The May story was a much better one!

Thanks for the feature!

Thanks for another “smashing” list =o)

This is my first post on here, despite looking around this site for a fair few months now, and the articles never cease to help or inspire.

Keep it up!

I love the list… Not very insperational? its a VERY nice list. those webpages present the content beautifully and inspire me.. If u want those crazy “insperational” sites go to http://www.thefwa.com. (I personally dont like most of them) Sites on this list is made for looking good and beeing easy to navigate and dont try to re-invent the wheel or something. Tommy

Excellent list, thanks for that..

Good list guys, there are some key ones that are brilliant.

I don’t know why these people are so critical.
You guys always do a stellar job with these compilations.
Keep up the great work.

i guess 98% of these sites are listed on http://screenfluent.com ?

“What percentage of these are fixed-width designs, and why does there seem to be a growing trend in that direction? Personally, I don’t really want to look at a page that is 750 pixels wide on my monitor that is 1920 pixels wide”

It’s much easier to make a fixed width page look great in my opinion. Sites look more balanced with a central column, plus it leaves room for artwork/texture down the sides.
Also very wide text is hard to read, narrow columns are much easier to follow.

On the plus side, you can have 2 and a half pages open at once on your big screen

Here’s a full screen site for you:
http://bla.st/

I think the problem with this list is not so much in the editing of smashing magazine it’s more to do with the actual direction of design on the internet.

Going right back to early 2000 there was still a very open style to the internet. Clearly good designs were few and far between; but when you found a design that was something fresh and new and pushed boundaries it really did inspire you. Taschen regularly published web designers alongside architects. (Though they did just publish a new web design book, I have yet to buy it).

As time has passed we’ve seen the rise of many css beauty galleries, design blogs, and the (love it or hate it) web 2.0 style movement.

There is a great move on the part of designers to follow these trends, and even designers who do try and push boundaries and come up with original ideas are so quickly drawn upon, and their ideas stylized into other site, that within just a few months they are once again, ‘one in a mass’. Just taking a quick browse though the comments so far, though there is an (unusual) trend of dismissing designs, I’m sure that many will use these as reference points, and pick styles, ideas and typography from several other sites, to create their own design.

While there is no problem with this, it is naturally part of the process of design evolution through mediums, I think in such a repetitive and flexible environment you quickly end up with many designs that, though are all technically sound and follow good practices, are little more than echoes of each other.

To just skim through this gallery (in fact, to just skim through any ‘beautiful site’ gallery from the last 1.5 years) you are met with reels of large blocked out header with simple sans-serif headers with punchy catch line sub-text, links condensed down to single words and icons denoting the meaning of single line text holders. These galleries, and resources, and design movements have single handedly made the net a much more beautiful and useable place, and in the same swoop removed drive for innovation, and quickly replicated it when found.

If you give most web designers with a natural feel of layout and color just a few simple lines of text, a handful of links, and a simple message to convey however hard they try and push against convention you can almost guarantee a fallback to 32pt Verdana and a bright or deep hued box offsetting important text.

Though I feel though much knowledge and awareness of many good practices are being learned (the greater awareness of the importance of typography, white space, block position, web standards) I think at the same time this is also the root cause of a different problem; that these fundamental basics are being learned from too-narrow of a spectrum of references.

To my mind one of the most successful and beautiful layouts is that of http://www.nymag.com. The sheer volume and variety of information presented, always in ever changing formats, the amount of navigation and the technical challenge of presenting it all. Yet here we have a beautifully presented, naturally intuitive, yet interestingly varied solution. The people behind this design clearly have a wealth of background experience from many different fields. If I pick, quickly, just one site off your list http://maczone.sk/uvod and directly flip between these two designs, I see on one hand (maczone), a technically skilled and well executed layout, but from a designer with little depth of understanding or experience beyond the basics of Verdana and centaury gothic; or inspiration beyond css galleries. On the other hand (nymag) I see years of experience, from what I expect is a mixed team of people ranging from developers through to traditional print artists.

Last year I worked on a project in London with a pair of high profile fashion photographers. When they were giving me the initial brief of concept, they presented me with a mash of magazine cutouts, newspaper clippings, layered photographs, even stills from skateboard films. Though sometimes I stumble upon a well written article (usually from a more senior designer) covering ideas to draw inspiration from other areas, I find there is a huge lack of movement to educate designers in fundamentals that are far broader and wide-reaching than just the basics of web design. Though there are many great resources around, if ask your average designer on the basics of color theory (“how do you workout which tertiary colors fall in harmony or complementary pairs?”) or basics of typography (“What font could you complement Helvetica with, with slanted stroke cuts?”) and you are met by a blank expression.

I for one am very ready to welcome a movement away from the “my site is built with standards!” period and into a period where web designers realize that their medium is just as flexible as the pages of a magine. At the end of the day every web designer is just another print graphics artist who also happens to be able to code; and I think the former still have a lot to learn as a group from the latter.

I guess I am in the minority that tend to look at designers, rather than individual pieces (I view the web in a similar context to how I would look at the furniture designers or photographers I love), and I find it slowly harder to find ones I really admire as ‘designers’ and not just ‘webdesigners’. The most acid test of the strength of a designer is the strip away all their tools and leave them with just text and lines, and see what they can construct armed just with these. If you look at the nymag site mentioned previously, you notice it is little more.

Though, there are a couple of gems that do catch my eye in the above list ;) for the most part I sigh and say “same old”, yet I don’t blame the editors, I blame the designers; because I for one can’t put together a list of 60 genuinely brilliant forward-pushing website designs anymore.

Ps; sorry for the essay! But maybe someone will read it and consider =)

great selection, quiet a few I have never seen before.

I agree that this list wasn’t as good as the others it’s not due to the sites being low-rate but that the other lists were really really good and this one was just good. but either way, keep up the good work gents.

i agree with the earlier posts here…some of these sites are nice but when quickly scrolling through the list i can’t help but notice how similar some of these are to one another. there are several back to back designs that are nearly identical in layout. this list easily could have been 10 sites long.

I dont actually write comments, but this time I must admit: THIS IS WORST POST ON SMASHING MAGAZINE EVER!!!

I am inspired. I am adding this to my bookmarks as a required site to review whenever I dream up a new design. It is good to have a nice catalog of designs to peruse when coming up with something new.

Beautiful Designs. I would love have one among these designs for my blog Tech Thoughts

I don’t get these people who criticize Smashing Magazine editors. Just take a look at all the crap which is showcased on most galleries – for me it’s just a waste of time to browse through them. On Smashing Magazine you always find quality – yeah, there are some sites featured in this article which I personally don’t like, but overall it is a great showcase again. I am glad Smashing Magazine does the good job again. Keep the good work!

Ah! you rock!!!

I have one question. What is great in Pownce design?????

Pablo:
I beg to differ. Admittedly, I do not visit many online showcase galleries because of their lack of inpsirational content, but there are many exceptions to this, for instance the excellent Light on dark gallery site, which totally made me go for a light on dark style for my own site as well.

But I’d like to know just what you are looking for. Maybe you do not even know it yourself?

WOW! great collection of sites. They are beautiful in colors, layout and content. Great post again.

Thanks

Love this selection. Only the first website “31Three” is featured in a previous post.

Great work!

Wow, some rough criticism, there was a lot of time and effort put into creating this list and while I may not like/admire all the designs there are some great designs there which are of inspiration to all of us in some way .. Kudos to you SM !

Thanks a lot this is a great tool for my inspiration, nice comment Pablo Im with your opinion.

have a nice day

Like someone else said… its just the way the trend is now for website/blogs… I mean 75% look like they are using the same template, or a derivative of hemingway.

but there are a good 25% of them listed that are nice, beautiful or unique.

So are the other 75% inspiring? yep! Inspires me to go out and try to smash the cookie cutter mold that they are using!.

FFS people!!! Thanks Smashing Magazine for taking the time to provide a list that people might find useful. If you don’t find them useful then that’s great. Good for you. I’m sure there are a shit load of SM readers who, like me, appreciate all of the goodness that SM have and continue to deliver.

nice work!

Post Web 2.0 Design

Thanks for compiling the list. I found a few on there inspirational in one way or another.

Thanks for the list. I’ve only recently come across Smashing Magazine, and it has very quickly become a great resource for me. Lists like this are great. Like you say, these are all usable and elegant designs, and there is some inspiration that can potentially be taken from almost every one.

Considering this is free and nobody is “obliged” to be inspired by it, I’m really surprised by the bitter and cutting nature of the negative comments that a few chose to leave.

Personally I’m glad that fixed width layouts seem to be on the way back. As screens get larger fluid layouts are often ugly and unreadable. Good design is about making information easy to digest (not filling the screen or the page with text).

Here is a design that I think is inspirational. It goes beyond the current gradient design look that is popular and really adds elements together to create something that stands out.

http://www.curiositygroup.com/

hey Vitaly, you guys make great lists. when you hear people critizing your stuff that is only because they are becoming tired of it. whenever you are given alot of something really good you began to get bored of it and thats what you guys are doing. thats a compliment by the way. as for these designs why dont you take some initive from them and use a nice layout. im sorry but this one is getting to old and to hard on the eyes.

I’ve seen a lot of these over the past few weeks on other CSS galleries (and that’s not to be taken as a snide remark), but I would like to make a suggestion and say that if you’re going to post gallery style articles that blocking the images side by side would look cleaner IMO.

A few good sites here I took note of thought. Thanks

I believe that all of these are beautiful. It’s quite amazing how a style is created and where designers take it. And unlike what I read a few posts above it does make me want to open up Photoshop and and work with color and space and general layout. Plus It’s important that these sites get out to more of the mainstream web. Most of all our clients are looking at designs from the mid 90s, thinking they’re cutting edge.

tough crowd… ouch!

To say this is not an inspirational list makes me wonder what they would find inspirational… true I have seen some of these somewhere before, but then again I have also lost alot of bookmarks during the ‘great crash’ of February and late July, so this is awesome.

I have yet to find a site that gives me more than Smashing Magazine, l love what you guys do and I think this site rocks!

thank you

Lots of good sites listed here. I would not call all of them inspiring but all are clean and have good layout.

To that I would also like to nominate our site: http://www.crazymenu.com it has a lot of function and we spent a lot of time to create a clean and minimalized site. We believe for site that provide content and information, the design should not overshadow or distract the information but help lay it out in a way natural to the eye and free of clutter so all information are quickly scanable.

The fact that I’ve already seen just about every web site showcased here is both amusing and alarming. It is, however, the fact that almost every comment made gives no proper feedback beyond the feeble I like or dislike the web sites listed that prompted me to post a comment of my own.

Looking at the showcase, I can immediately list at least eight distinguishing trends with regards to usability and design (personal opinions aside – just because it’s fashionable, doesn’t meant that you have like it). It is possible to elaborate on the effectiveness of each of the designs with regards to the products or services they provide, the audience they are intended for and the life expectancy of the designs themselves. One can ever go as far as to discuss the color palettes and their symbolic interpretation (like the adventurous and possibly fatal use of red – the color of love and lust, but also the color of blood and violence, death, hell and sin) in comparison to the site’s content.

The fact that these sites have been featured here (and everywhere else) speaks volumes about their success, yet very few here have discovered and discussed the secrets to obtaining the same volume of success in a digital world where web sites continuously struggle to be seen. Not every product, and most certainly not every web site, is meant to be inspirational. But the fact that these web sites are undoubtedly successful in their function alone is inspirational. Using W3C Standards Compliant programming guidelines ensures that a web site can be seen and used across every platform, no matter what operating system, browser (or mobile device) the viewer is using, in exactly the same way is inspirational. Keeping viewers with disabilities in mind when designing and developing a site (there are some people whose vision is completely distorted when looking at the color black) is inspirational. And ending up with a web site that functions (and to a certain extent looks) similar to the rest, aids familiarity with novice users and while they might not even acknowledge it – the fact that a web site is easy to navigate will please them more than any complicated and unclear navigational system, no matter how visually pleasing it is.

Online development (no matter which part one concentrates on) is an art form in an extremely complex environment where everyone’s an expert and critics abound. While one web site may not be as inspirational as the next, the fact that it grabbed your attention long enough to solicit a response – is inspirational …

@Quakeulf:

Something tells me you need to spend more time reading SM posts, considering the lackluster design of your web”sight”. Not much of a sighting.

Theres some really great stuff there. I’m about to start some design work and i’ll be looking for some inspiration from these sites.

I hate to join the nay-sayers, but I have to agree that I didn’t find much inspiration in this list.

So many of them look the same, and the ones that are unique have little to do with the design of the site and more to do with the use of a great photo.

Its a nice list and huge list.
Sites are cool but I was tired of scrolling the page to button hehe.

This is awesome! The most comprehensive list of inspiring designs. Thank you God! :)

Great job. Design is subjective, but some of those sites are among the best on internet. Not all, however, and no one expected that. Some of them are really inspirational. Once again, great job!

I Think the sites looks great . . but yeah after zooming in a couple of them, they look very much the same yeah . . . sometimes i got a feeling that everyone is kinda copying . . the web 2.0 hype probably:

1. Drop shadows
2. shiny plastic . . on . . yeah like everything you can imagine?

I’m not in the design industry, but I am looking for a clean and simple design for a site that I’d like to have built for my small LLC. Finding a designer who isn’t obsessed with dazzle and overstimulation has been difficult, so this post is encouraging (as are some of the responses). Perhaps someone knows a designer who needs some experience and has a has an interest in designing for me. Drop a line: TheMsMack.@mac.com

I honestly am getting bored with this web 2.0 style… Almost all of these sites look like they have been made by the same designer. They are so similar and boring.

I mean don’t get me wrong, they are all well made and everything, but none of them is very inspiring…

Ok, I just gotta say one thing; Wow… How many people that actually “complained” on this topic about how “Not Inspirational” these designs are… When in fact they all complained about the same thing (Layout). However, inspriation is more than just a layout and css and bla bla bla. It can be colors, icons, text, colors of headers and fonts used. Now lets just say, 60 designs, each having different icons, different fonts, layouts, colors and yet people can say they found “no inspiration” from them? With all that said, I dont think its a matter of being inspired at all, its more of a matter of being rude or “I can do better” but cant back it up with proof.

Sincerely,

Christopher James

Great! I learned a lot here all the time!

I think some of these are really great with nice attention to detail, but some are rather bland.
Most actually look better in the screenshot than they do in the live site.
Just my opinion….. :)

very nice article love the design

felicitaciones por la busqueda de paginas, estan muy buenas, paginas como estas amplian el mundo de los diseñadores web, muchas gracias por compartir este conocimiento tan especifico, sigan asi.

One word that describes them best: BEAUTIFUL

SUCESSO !…, ABRAÇOS. BOKA.