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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Web design: top three

wembley can change in 28 days

15:02 / 13.04.02

Being a dilettante in the whole online sector, I often run to the authority of very pretty sites for inspiration. My bookmarks include such pixelated wonders as:
hookares.com
redrabit design journal
the-eclectica.com

So, lay 'em on: what are your top three? For visual candy or for clever navigation? I need fodder!

18:37 / 13.04.02

For eye candy I like :

123 Klan
Fatoe.
and sometimes
Design Damage

Or how about something kinky

Porno-grafics or Ultrafashionporn

And if you're looking for more inspiration Stereotypography is an excellent portal in which to unearth more wonderful eye junk. Links galore.

Cheers.

01:29 / 15.04.02

...3...hmmm...there's actually a few thousand...

TURUX

yugop

presstube

Here's 3 that have changed me and my thinking...

03:19 / 15.04.02

that 123Klan bunch are awfully niffty aren't they?

14:57 / 15.04.02

Figured I might as well get serious...can't manage just three though...

Portals...

surfstation
DIK
threeoh
linkdup
digitalthread
designinmotion

Some friends...

jordancrane
numbawon

21:28 / 15.04.02

mkdzk
flong
praystation

10:07 / 16.04.02

ok, you know what i dislike about design sites? it's the way they almost always have a homepage that does nothing. it bugs me. just put your index on your homepage. why not? and then when you click to enter, they almost always launch the next page in a new browser that doesn't have the program navigation buttons on it. i can appreciate that these people want to make the most of the space to show off their designs, but it's not very user-friendly. even a disclaimer saying "for best effect, please maximise your browser" or something is better than not having the option. not to mention a warning that it'll open a new window -- the amount of times the computer has crashed because of constantly having new browser windows opening for every damn page...

>sigh< [/end rant]

for arty stuff:

http://www.annie-site.com is pretty. navigation is a little oblique, but i did find it pretty easy to figure out -- i guess because i visit so many sites!

http://www.ping.be/superpopstudio is glooooriously kitsch.

http://www.designboom.com/eng/index.xtml is one of the best directories out there.

09:29 / 24.05.02

Are these sites examples of web DESIGN or web ART?

I rather think the latter.

Don't get me wrong - some of the stuff is beautiful - i >heart< Yugop. but i think it's art, not design.

I think the best examples of web DESIGN are at http://www.37signals.com esp. where they just take it upon themselves to fix other peoples sites (e.g. "FedEx, your site sucks... we redesigned it for you! it works now!")

Design is solving problems elegantly, not acts of self-creation. Or as charles and ray eames put it: "design is doing the best, for the most, with the least"

just a thought

10:20 / 30.05.02

yeah, bbj, you have a point. but where does "design" become "art"? and on the web, the lines are blurrier still: good design often means good navigability.

15:48 / 30.05.02

"design is doing the best, for the most, with the least"

Definitely a point that most people get away from...the tools can be so easy to exploit and if the vision builds and gets away from the main idea, it's easier to see things get bloated and over done.

With that in mind, check out this...only 5k to play with for the sites...

23:56 / 30.05.02

Are these sites examples of web DESIGN or web ART?

It depends on what sort of 'design' you are looking for. Is it functional web design or web enabled graphic design.

Graphic designers push the use of image and representation, functionality has a diferent meaning in this context and does not necessarily translate (though it might) to good WEB design. Good (web)design often means inventive or novel (or beautiful) to the graphic designer, rather than use base functionality. So the judging criteria is often whether it is a 'pleasure' to use rather than 'easy' to use.

08:03 / 10.06.02

The problem with a lot of these sites is that although they look very nice when they load, they take too long to do so. I'm on a very fast dialup connection, but I still had to wait ages for some of them to come up and I can just imagine that a lot of people with slow or bad connections will just give up.