I teach a class in web design and want to show my students some sites that would be considered aesthetically superior to most websites.
Can you suggest any (non-pornographic) websites that you would consider exceptional in terms of style, design, color and originality?
Thanks!
One I like to visit is CSS Zen Garden. If you click the links to the side of each of them you’ll see extremely varied and beautiful design, where the only thing they’ve changed is in the CSS Stylesheet, and not the HTML or text.
A similar one with live sites linked from is CSS Beauty,
I’m not sure these fit your criteria - they’re pretty in the artistic sense, rather than specifically the ‘good design’ sense (although some may be both).
One that I think is unusual and works really well is www.mcdonalds.com.au
(Yep, that McDonald’s!)
Takes a while to load, but it is kind of different.
What you really need to show them is the opposite. You know. As a warning. (Warning: sound. And color. And may have been made by a robot, I can’t really tell.)
They have all the money in the universe to make a nifty site, instead, they choose simple and useful.
Gah… I disagree. Any site that opens a new window or resizes my current one gets closed immediately.
That’s a huge problem.
Also a problem. I want information quickly, and I want the path to get it to be quick and intuitive.
I have to agree with BACI that the site certainly is “different” than you would expect from a corporate giant. I will show this to the students to see if they come up with the same (very valid) complaints that you did, Troy.
That is something to take into consideration - as you mention, here is a company that literally oozes money, and yet their website is about as basic as it gets.
Excellent site, and I like that they go out on a limb and attempt to define the aspects that set these sites apart from more mundane sites. Great site to show the class to get their comments. Thanks!
Yes, I know about csszengarden. A great site, and for my css class, we had to create our own entry. It is a hell of a lot more difficult to create than one might think!
Very cool and sleek - just what would you expect from a German design company - but I like the functionality and presentation, as well as the black and white theme. Nice.
Me too, but the OP asked for “aesthetically superior”.
Usually the aesthetically superior sites are difficult to use if you are looking for actual information. (See every automobile site). Sites that are both nice-looking and easy to use(at a screen resolution different than the designer’s) are rare.
You can learn a lot by studying good web sites.
And you can learn a lot by doing the opposite: www.websitesthatsuck.com
(my apologies if you already know that link. But it is pretty educational.)
Thank you LionelHutz405 for better clarifying what I am looking for.
Yes, I know many of these sites are not ideal for e-commerce and leave a lot to be desired in terms of speed, content and intuitive navigation. We most certainly will discuss those limitations in class.
Still, I want to show them sites that don’t care about that and are more interested in the use of good color, originality, artistic design and style. Ideally they will be inspired to try to meld the aesthetic with better functionality. No easy task, as you rightly mention.
Regarding others’ suggestions of showing the really horrible sites - we covered that in the first few weeks, to much hilarity, and they quickly caught on to what they should NOT be doing.
one of my faves
( just keep clicking around and switch your speakers ON)
http://www.ezgeta.com/welcome.html
http://www.ezgeta.com/midi.html
http://www.ezgeta.com/film.html
Thanks for noticing how terrible www.bacononabun.com is, I’ve worked really hard to make it so. It’s a bit puzzling it was even found, let alone brought up in a conversation on a message board. I’m a bit surprised you could think it was written by a robot. It hadn’t occurred to me to write a program to make the site even worse, but you have inspired me to try.
Thanks,
Bacononabun
I’m with Troy McClure SF on this one. I’ve had occasion to try to look things up on that site before now, and I always get annoyed that it’s such a PITA to navigate, as well as slow to load and information-light, pointlessness-heavy (or ILPH for short).
My husband was just looking at this site for Hema online - I don’t know what Hema is, the site isn’t in English, it take a little while to load, and it isn’t beautiful, but it’s entertaining as hell.