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Some of the best festivals and conferences of the year are gone by now, but if we’d just want to judge them by their online presence we can do it from the comfort of our couch. There was some research involved in this article, you wouldn’t believe it how many of the biggest events in the world have so flat and unexciting websites. However, we’ve finally managed to find quite a few cool ones, so we wish you a pleasant and inspirational journey.

In this post we present some of the beautiful, original and inspirational web designs of festivals and conferences that took place or are going to take place this year. Please feel free to add links to further designs in the comments to this post!

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Music Festivals

Bumbershoot
Nice color scheme, trippy background, and a great all-in-one homepage experience with lots of info very well organized.

Bonnaroo
This one is kinda crowded but has some awesome visual effects that really bring the festival atmosphere to the web, displaying cool features, like a showcase with the best performances, recorded selection to watch online, and a radio station.

Parklife
"A world of its own" seems to be not only the tagline of the festival but of the website too. Creative Flash use and a nifty 3D experience are the best features of this one.

Beachdown
Another innovative project, the Beachdown website has a horizontal style navigation system that scrolls the sticky notes with info, images and video.

BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend
A small website for a big weekend and a huge event. BBC Radio 1 has quite a nice microsite for this event, based on a dead simple layout and a cool color scheme.

Pukkelpop
This one could hurt your eyes a bit, but I guess festivals like that could hurt your ears as well, so it makes sense. Other features – great community implementation and creative footer.

Creamfields
Another huge fest with a neat online presence. Creamfields has an interesting image scroller synchronized with internal banners and a fresh identity.

V Festival
One of the most appreciated rock music festivals in the world, V pumped some interactivity into its website: there’s a strong community component, a Twitter scanning system, and a poll where the fans could decide which onstage collaboration would they like to see.

Flow Festival
This is the proof that even for a big event you could keep a clean simple website with nothing more than great design.

Fremont Oktoberfest
Simple and effective design for this one. The bright colors and the smooth jQuery menu work very well for a beer outlet.

Mystery Land

Film & Art Festivals

Tati en Fete
This Flash website is the eye candy of the selection. The beautiful graphics, animation, and music make it a huge browsable universe of Jacques Tati.

Locarno Film Festival
Slim website with no less than four menus and a few transparent areas where you can see the dominant background.

Festival de Cannes
Very compact multimedia homepage with lots of videos and pictures & a dynamic info scroller. Amazing usability!

The Animation Show
A well-organized blog with a proper look and feel for a great animation festival.

Edinburgh International Festival
Another color masterpiece, the Edinburgh International Festival is as reach in website features as in live events. Great usability and innovative multimedia gallery in the Try Before You Buy section.

Colophon
The only minimalist entry in this roundup, the Colophon ‘09 website has everything an event for magazine enthusiasts should have: a cool simple look, a huge searchable directory of indie magazines, tons of interviews, and an exclusive social network for mag lovers.

Amsterdam Film Experience
This Flash based website is a fully functional video jukebox with an innovative navigation system. Be sure to double click the flipping buttons.

Darwin Festival
A program focused website organized like a calendar is a great idea for a festival. Plus, there’s a nice community platform well integrated with the website.

Ars Electronica
A crisp webdesign with effective navigation, creative menu solution, and ajaxified sidebar.

The Media Festival
Another fresh design with irregular header, live news updater, popping colors, and lots of badges. Nuff said.

Arts & Ideas
Creative integration of the elements is the key factor here, combined with a great color scheme. Nice work!

Web Conferences & Design Events

London Digital Week
Here it’s all about the blurry moving images in the header and the bright colors used for the categories. Awesome effect!

An Event Apart

Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference

Future of Web Design

SXSW
Big hype means big business and big business means great webdesign; at least in this case. The SXSW sports a clean website with a 16 bits meets Web 2.0 feel.

Next 09
A light website with a clean blog approach and an excellent video gallery.

The 99 Percent
This is so slick – a webdesign masterpiece with the soul of a blog. The best part? A scrolling sidebar with news from around the web.

Freelance Camp
Welcome to the army! The freelance army, that is! You have all you need – updates from the Captain, map with the camp location, a volunteering tool, and a community.

Tech Adventure
Finally a one-page beauty! Great hand-made-eco-green look and awesome Twitter & Facebook integration.

Electrolux Design Lab
One of the well-known events in the design world, EDL ‘09 has a nice landing page with a light graffiti approach crafted in Flash. You should turn off the music :)

Cannes Lions
The Cannes Festival for advertising is a huge event with over 200 speakers, but with a modest and clean online presence. The best part – a slick login button in the upper right corner.

LDZIGN
Very nice header with some motion involved, and a dynamic left aligned menu make it very clear and easy to use.