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
11. CSS Bloom
10. CSS Tux
9. Design Flavr
8. The Best Designs
http://www.thebestdesigns.com/
7. Unmatched Style
http://www.unmatchedstyle.com/
6. Stylegala
5. W3C Sites
4. Design Snack
3. CSS Artillery
2. Styleboost
1. The Horizontal Way
http://www.thehorizontalway.com/
I’m sure you all disagree, so let me hear it …
¿http://cssbrigit.com?
http://www.designshack.co.uk ?
Another great one!
Excellent list.
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.
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
Certainly a great list to gain inspiration from.
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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.
Thanks for the mention!
http://www.dezinspiration.com
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@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
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.
There would be ways to add the shadowing with an overlay, note to self
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.
http://www.redhotcss.com/ ?
Personally, I think this one tops some of these..
@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.
http://www.thefwa.com is the daddy
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!
You should check http://www.bestwebgallery.com
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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.
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.
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Another Great Gallery:
http://www.css-design.fr
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How about http://www.cssblogger.com ?
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cssbrigit also has best looking css gallery. just check on it.
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.
@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.
http://www.minimalsites.com is a css gallery only for minimally designed websties.
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Great list; I think that FantastiCSS looks great also; very good gallery with only the best of the best CSS designs
look at new croatian gallery: http://www.kroativ.com
Though this not the best looking designs … I liked some of them like 3, 4 and 1 … keep it up
great addition to my bookmarks. thx.
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