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.
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.
Read more…
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.
Read more…
In this article we’ll examine the issues that face corporate blogs, we’ll observe some current trends, and we’ll look at a large sample of blogs from companies of various sizes in a wide variety of industries.
Read more…
Beautiful and creative typography can come in a variety of different forms. Hand drawn typography can be an excellent source of inspiration for graphic designers and typography lovers. In this post we will feature 40 creations that use hand drawn type.
Read more…
It may be the economical slowdown, the climate change, or even a random boost of creativity, but the competition between graphic studios is huge right now. Today, more than ever, you really need to show something special on your website to be noticed. So we made a selection of 30 portfolios that describe a studio or a freelancer with a unique personality.
Read more…
Leaning away from the old Gothic architectural styles of Germany, Bauhaus exhibited a more simplistic approach. Modernism left out the decorative ornaments and trims which had no functional purpose. The new designs showed you can have style and cost effectiveness all in one.
Read more…
Creating personal portfolio website is probably the most challenging task for designers as it should reveal the talent and some special unique style of its author. Beautiful portfolio is like a good setting – it makes design works sparkle and grabs visitors’ attention immediately.
Read more…
Most bloggers and website designers understand how difficult it can be to attract visitors to a website. In fact, most websites have just moments to attract potential readers. Several factors contribute to how well a website attracts its readers. These factors include well-written headlines, interesting content and design quality. While all of these aspects are important, today we will focus on a very specific and sometimes overlooked element in a website’s design: the “Read more” or “Continue reading” link that follows a headline or summary of an article. [Links checked February/11/2017]
Read more…
