12 Best Looking Design Galleries

Posted in GalleriesJul 15, 08 | 10:01 am

Mubashar Iqbal

Design galleries showcase well designed websites, which doesn’t mean that they need to be well designed themselves right? Well of course they should, but with the explosion of design galleries there are some pretty terrible looking ones.

I decided to find the best looking design galleries. Remember, this doesn’t mean they are the best design gallery … they may not update often enough, or have enough features to make them useful, but they sure do look good.

Vandelay Designs recently posted a ranking of the top 80 CSS galleries which I used as my source list.

Without further ado here is my list of the 12 best looking design galleries…

12. Plastic Pilots

http://www.plasticpilots.com/

11. CSS Bloom

http://www.cssbloom.com/

10. CSS Tux

http://www.csstux.com/

9. Design Flavr

http://www.designflavr.com/

8. The Best Designs

http://www.thebestdesigns.com/

7. Unmatched Style

http://www.unmatchedstyle.com/

6. Stylegala

http://www.stylegala.com/

5. W3C Sites

http://www.w3csites.com/

4. Design Snack

http://www.designsnack.com/

3. CSS Artillery

http://www.cssartillery.com/

2. Styleboost

http://styleboost.com/

1. The Horizontal Way

http://www.thehorizontalway.com/

I’m sure you all disagree, so let me hear it …

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Author: Mubashar Iqbal
Mubashar Iqbal is the creator of Most Inspired, a web designer and developer, who has been building websites for over 13 years. You can read his blog at Mubashar Iqbal

inspiring commentary

July 15th, 2008 at 10:30 amMöller

¿http://cssbrigit.com?

July 15th, 2008 at 11:28 amPinkPetrol

http://www.designshack.co.uk ?

Another great one!

July 15th, 2008 at 11:33 amFubiz

Excellent list.

July 15th, 2008 at 12:54 pmexistdissolve

Personally, I hate design galleries that make you upload screenshots. There are a billion-and-one screenshot generating tools out there that this should not even be an issue anymore.

Of course, this is symptomatic of a bigger problem: why the heck do design gallery owners not get together and decide on a common format for submission? It is particularly obnoxious to submit to several galleries with each of them requiring completely different information for what is exactly the same thing.

I propose that a central submission service be created that will allow site submitters to submit to one service, and have all the galleries pick up from this if they want.

July 15th, 2008 at 12:56 pmkelly

maybe I’m alone in this one but I don’t like these sites that don’t show me a full screen shot of the website. A cool header graphic or logo doesn’t make a website.

http://www.designmeltdown.com will always be number 1 for me. It’s still in baby steps but my site is http://www.dailylove.org

July 15th, 2008 at 1:14 pmJeffro2pt0

Certainly a great list to gain inspiration from.

July 15th, 2008 at 6:12 pm12 Best Looking Design Galleries - Kreativuse™ - Creative Resources and Inspirations

[...] There are a lot of design galleries on the web nowadyas. Most Inspired created a list of 12 best looking design galleries. [...]

July 15th, 2008 at 6:15 pmSteven Snell

In terms of design my favorites are Design Snack, The Best Designs and Design Flavr. I agree with Kelly, I strongly prefer full screen shots. I find myself clicking a lot unnecessarily otherwise.

And thanks for the link.

July 15th, 2008 at 6:25 pmGene

Thanks for the mention!

July 15th, 2008 at 8:18 pmdeziner

http://www.dezinspiration.com

July 15th, 2008 at 10:06 pm12 Best Looking Design Galleries | WhiteSandsDigital.com

[...] terrible looking ones. Without further ado here is my list of the 12 best looking design galleries.read more | digg [...]

July 15th, 2008 at 11:21 pmMubashar Iqbal

@Pinkpetrol: Design Shack that is pretty cool, wasn’t far down on my list

@existdissolve: Totally agree, if a gallery can’t create their own screenshot they should be around. Interesting on the standard format, but the galleries are run on different platforms and CMS’s, not sure how easy it would be to get everyone talking the same language.

There were a couple of websites that would allow you submit (for a small fee) to many different galleries from one form, but the seem to have died off.

@kelly: right you are, having a partial screen grab is useless especially when the website is redesigned.

@Jeffro2pt0: thanks!

@steven: no problem, made my life a lot easier

July 15th, 2008 at 11:47 pmty.Gossman

I like the comment about screenshots, you have no idea of the amount of time going in to creating those with soft shadowed edges.
Save it with FF screenshot.
Open it in PHotoshop, resize it, paste on the layer style and save it. It’s a very quality effort put forth by the best galleries, no small amount of time, no matter the workflow.

July 15th, 2008 at 11:50 pmty.Gossman

There would be ways to add the shadowing with an overlay, note to self

July 16th, 2008 at 5:56 amJohn Faulds

I’m not sure I agree with some of these being the best either but at least it helped me update my list to show Plastic Pilots as now being active.

July 16th, 2008 at 11:14 amMatthew B

http://www.redhotcss.com/ ?

Personally, I think this one tops some of these..

July 17th, 2008 at 6:58 amThomas

@existdissolve I’m from plasticpilots and usually I do the screenshots myself. There are three reasons why I do this extra-work.
1. Automatic screenshots fail on most flash websites
2. I select what’s important
3. Most times I have more than only one screenshot.

During the two months I now took over plasticpilots, most of the new content are websites I added myself. I reject about 60% of the submissions cuz there’s so much crap.

For those looking for an automatic solution, Alex (former owner of plasticpilots) and I created rollr.com which runs almost the same open source software and just takes del.icio.us feeds. So that’s very automatic.

July 17th, 2008 at 9:31 amnick

http://www.thefwa.com is the daddy

July 17th, 2008 at 11:57 amty.Gossman

Hi Mubs, Hey I’m surprised you didn’t list mention this one, it’s hot and new, and follows a theme: http://www.cssnature.org/
me likes!

July 21st, 2008 at 2:07 amRijalul FIkri

You should check http://www.bestwebgallery.com

July 23rd, 2008 at 1:01 amInspiration « Inspiration, Designbereichen, CSS-Designgallerien, Poster, Beautiful, Series, Logodesigns, Designbuchcover « Volderette

[...] CSS-Designgallerien [...]

July 23rd, 2008 at 1:47 pmUtahLuxury.com

I am going to agree with a couple of comments here. bestwebgallery.com, thefwa.com, cssmania.com and I know I am forgetting one… oh well cheers.

July 25th, 2008 at 5:23 amaSKer

I might add http://css.wearethebuzz.com which is currently the most frequently updated CSS gallery with a new design added every 4 hours!
It has a grungy design and features big screenshots…
Stay tuned.

July 28th, 2008 at 1:14 amMetropolis

[...] – Get out of a Creative Slump – 10 consejos para recodificar un sitio web – Live Surface (Via) – 12 Design Galleries – Flash y [...]

July 28th, 2008 at 8:56 amRezolutions

Another Great Gallery:
http://www.css-design.fr

July 29th, 2008 at 9:10 pmBest of July, 2008: This Month in Web Design | Vandelay Website Design

[...] 12 Best Looking Design Galleries from Most Inspired. [...]

July 30th, 2008 at 2:58 amRazvan

How about http://www.cssblogger.com ?

August 1st, 2008 at 5:16 amBest of the Month - Iulie

[...] 12 Best Looking Design Galleries [...]

August 2nd, 2008 at 11:48 pmMark Abucayon

cssbrigit also has best looking css gallery. just check on it.

August 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pmChristoph

Very interesting thread and some great inspiration. I’m doing some research for my own little site at http://www.creativeroll.com, which is just in its infancy and is not so much web design focused.

Design Flavr is really nice, although the sidebar is pretty overloaded with ads.

Also interesting how some of the sites focus on having as many updates as possible instead of focusing on quality design.

August 5th, 2008 at 6:05 pmMubashar Iqbal

@Christoph: I like what you’ve got going on at CreativeRoll.

It is a tough balance running a gallery, you want to add content often enough to keep your visitors happy, but want to make sure you’re not adding content just for the sake of adding content.