Fresh inspiration, portfolios, galleries and new showcases of remarkable web design and artwork in general is what every creative head needs to refuel. Break your creativity block by exploring galleries of art, design and photography or showcases of web designs (blogs, portfolios and online-shops) and design elements (search box, back-to-top-link).
Popular tags in this category: Photos, Showcases, Portfolios, E-commerce, Blogs, Navigation, Logos, Favicons.
If you've been assigned to design or provide the architecture for a large e-commerce project or other information-heavy website whose success depends on content findability, it is vital that the design and layout of the search functionality for that website is considered carefully.
The search results page is the prime focus of the search experience, and can make or break a site's conversion rates. Therefore, bridging the gap between a user and the content or products they seek is a crucial factor in the success of any large website. The responsibility to design an effective search results page is best considered after a thorough examination of some of the features and functions found on search results pages from a number of popular niches.
In this article, we'll look at a number of trends and practices incorporated on a variety of websites. From this examination, we'll conclude with a summary of the best practices learned from the examples those sites have set.
Read more...Portfolio websites are critical for designers who want to get exposure for their work and attract new clients. While all portfolio sites will showcase the work of the designer, some have chosen to provide additional information about the project through case studies.
In this post we will be featuring more than 30 portfolio sites to show how they are using case studies from their own design projects to communicate with potential clients. Not all of them are referred to as "case studies" on the site, but all provide much more information than just giving a screenshot with the client's name.
If you are considering ways to make your existing work more relevant or appealing to visitors who may be potential clients, providing case studies is one option. Take a look at the sites featured here and you may come up with some ideas of how they could be used on your own site.
Read more...Government websites are generally considered to be boring and unattractive in terms of design. While this may be true of the majority of government websites, there are some notable exceptions. In this post we will feature some of the best websites from government agencies and from politicians involved in government. This represents a small sample showing the most appealing sites, although there are hundreds and thousands of different government sites in existence from many countries (a report from 2008 revealed that there may be as many as 2,500 government sites from the UK alone).
Regardless of whether a site uses an attractive design or not, government and political sites typically will contain large amounts of information, and that content must be the priority if the site is to effectively serve its purpose. Some government sites serve as portals that direct visitors in different directions in order to help the find the sites of specific agencies or entities that will include the information that they need. Other sites serve a specific purpose, such as providing information about a museum, a park, or an exhibit. Of course, politicians and political parties also have their own websites to spread their messages, communicate with their party members, and to help find new supporters.
Read more...The time has come for the first showcase of music night club websites here on Smashing Magazine. We've scanned the Web up and down to find the most original and interesting online club identities. As usual, we have Flash websites and CSS eye candy. Please notice that the aim of the post was to showcase current web designs of music night clubs, so the gallery doesn't necessarily showcase most usable or most beautiful night club web designs out there.
As we observed in the early Showcase of Fresh and Well-Designed Online Shops, the most obvious trend is the use of big bold pictures, either as backgrounds, headers or just side graphic elements thrown in the design mix. Most of them start playing music automatically (which is extremely annoying from the usability point of view), but in this case it's not weird or off-putting because they are music club websites after all.
Another trend is the use of bright, vivid colors and intense color schemes, borrowed from the clubs themselves. Also, Flash clearly dominates in such web-sites, presenting some very unconventional navigation menus and very distinctive layouts that aren't intuitive at all at the first glance.
Read more...The horizontal navigation menu has become a mainstay in Web design. It is safe to say that nowadays most websites use some form of horizontal navigation to facilitate content browsing. The dominance of horizontal navigation over vertical (i.e. down a sidebar) is obviously due to the design and content limitations of the latter. Notably, CNN discovered those limitations before switching from vertical to horizontal a few years back.
There are, however, many styles of horizontal navigation in modern Web design. Some offer usability advantages for certain types of websites, while others are aesthetically better. In this article, we will focus on a variety of techniques and best practices to improve the usability of horizontal navigation bars, and we will note less effective styles. We'll also look at several trends that developers can choose from when working on the navigation design for their next project.
Read more...In this article we'll take a look at designing websites from a quite different perspective. We'll discuss some pearls of samurai wisdom from the book “Hagakure” by Yamamoto Tsunetomo and we'll learn to apply them to our Web-based, computer-bound Western life to become true samurai designers. We'll also get to know impressive examples of artworks that exhibit the samurai approach.
“Hagakure” (In the shadow of the leaves) is a collection of writings compiling the narrations of the samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1719), who in his late years retired from his occupation and, as a hermit, recounted the wisdom of his warrior caste. Largely unknown for centuries, Hagakure became prominent in the 1930s and is considered today one of the most authoritative sources on the ethics of the samurai.
Read more...E-Commerce websites are often thought of as typically being unattractive or poorly designed. In this post we will feature 35 appealing designs of online shops. Those featured in this post include examples from a variety of different industries and showcase several different styles of design.
Throughout this showcase the most noticeable trend of well-designed e-commerce sites is the use of high-quality photos. Many of the sites use large images on the homepage, and product and model photography is always important for creating interest from visitors.
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Looking at websites from major industries that involve various forms of media can be interesting practice. In the past we have showcased websites from movies and from musicians on the Billboard charts, and today we'll feature the websites of more than 50 TV shows.
The websites of TV shows are intended to generate interest in the show to improve ratings, and to provide information about the show (and sometimes past episodes) for those people who are already fans of the show. To accomplish this they attempt to create an attractive, interactive website that appeals to visitors.
As you browse through the sites that are featured in this showcase, here are some of the trends that you may notice. Many, but not all, websites of TV shows are located on the networks domain. This helps to unify the websites of the various shows on the network and can even help visitors of the site to remember what network a particular show is on.
Read more...Styles in design are described and classified in many ways. Sometimes they are given a moniker, like "Web 2.0," other times they are referred to by their appearance: grungy, minimalist, retro, big type. The people (and brands) to which modern design styles are attributed are as numerous as the styles themselves. Many designers look to a brand such as Apple as an example of great modern design because a designer's sensibility is infused into everything it does.
Even though many current styles and trends can be connected to recent design pieces, they do not originate there. So much modern design originated before computers and the Web were even a glimmer in the eye of their creators.
Looking back and drawing inspiration from very early graphic and print design is a current trend nowadays, but that is not the beginning of the story. As you go further back, you'll find groundbreaking design decades, even a century, ago. In this article we’ll explore inspirational paintings and artists who have influenced modern design. In reading this article, you will see some true evolution in design.
Read more...
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