most inspired - blog

Bird-Malaysia.com

A great combo of strong typography and photography. The page banner images do a nice job of extending the subject matter beyond the boundaries of the box, to bring the birds to the foreground of the page design.

GreatUrbanPetEscapes.ca

Bread and Butter!

Looking for a design on a certain subject matter (pets), and certain recent submissions to the CSS galleries stand out. This recent entrée at CSSMania caught my eye. Man’s best friend looks particularly apropos on the homepage if not downright anthropomorphic, thanks to Cash Cab for improving my vocabulary on that last wordy-word.

Nkmip.com

Nk’Mip Resort, Osoyoos - British Columbia Canada

9web.co.uk

Exceptional grid layout at work in this clean and straightforeward design approach, with some script.aculo.us bits thrown in for good measure.

AdLitteram.be

Flash concept intros on many of the pages highlight this evocative red palette site.

BradFrostWeb.com/blog

A novel page concept, the content of the blog, scrolls inside the mouth, that resizes to fit the window.

MarchandDeTrucs.com

I don’t speak french, but I had a feeling before translating it that this site was a magic/novelty shop. I just love the sound of the bell going off as though people are going in and out of the shop. The illustration is quite magical… good stuff. Link for French to English translation site, hope this works.

Stampede-Design.com

A web services outfit in SouthEast Asia, Malaysia to be exact. The design is somewhat exotic in it’s dark floral grunginess.

studio7designs.com

With a 2-tier dropline menu, this site is packed full of design and graphic goodness.

IdioticAdventures.com

Enough of the serious design concepts and cultivating new ideas by exploring the latest technical genre, let’s get to some serious and much needed slacking off via animation video shorts of the headless kind (left-brain vs right-brain vs no-brain)!

Other Noteable and Fun Sites this Week:

http://ui.jquery.com

The jQuery User-Interface widgets, components and interaction scripts, just got a new site, and an updated script library v.1.5b4, as well as many new demos! The new site is hot off-the-wire, I can’t wait to check out the new demos…

http://faub.org

This ranks about a zero on the SEO and accessibility scale, but it’s a fun site concept nonetheless… with some interesting usage of drag n’ drop, transparency and a combo box navigation. Some image replacement techniques could have provided at least a minutia of content that the search engines could have indexed. As an experimental novelty site with a visual navigation, it’s really very clever.

It turns out the DOM Drag & Drop script is available from Dynamic Drive, check it out here. Please use sparingly.

The Weekly Top Standards question of the week…
How Bloggy is your Blog?

Acronym of the week:
FOSS - Free and open source software

Cheb.com.au

Cheb 2.0.1 was redesigned April 13th, a web design geek blog. Cheb Dagher is the blogs owner, in Sydney, Australia. The site is built using WordPress.

AuthenticStyle.co.uk

A sliding scroll page type of navigation, works pretty well, when the page slides to it’s new position, another identical menu appears in the same position as before to make it easy to use.

Fantesca.com

Fantesca: Winery and Estate, Napa Valley - St. Helena, CA, an exquisite site.

MoxieGlobal.com.au

EarlyInterventionSupport.com

A new twist on some standard design concepts, done with some freeform illustration and mixed-media visual styling.

TheNorik.com

I’m usually not a big fan of portfolio sites who place long lists of their work directly on the homepage, such that it requires huge amounts of scrolling, but this two-page site makes it work. There is a certain elegance in the simplicity. Twelve portfolio pieces are shown at TheNorik, and those pop open in a light box setup. The lightbox setup uses a certain amount of style, and not the default chrome navigation elements, so that it is completely fitting in the design. The portfolio pieces themselves are not lacking in any skills either, showing some refined talent and inspiration. Overall, everything is very tastefully done…

DesignIntellection.com

Finally, a more or less plain vanilla web standards site in the minimalist vein that strikes my fancy.

DennaJones.com

This site has a treasure trove of API usage documented here by the happy merchants. Awesome stuff gang, the phrase “happy merchant” reminds me of Leslie Camacho’s EE forum’s signature quote, more aptly an African proverb: “I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand… “. Although actually I could of swore the forum signature was, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” Anyways… back to some more websites!

LarvaLabs.com

A New York based software company focused on mobile entertainment application goodies for the T-Mobile Sidekick platform.

DevKick.com

A web dev designer community site made by notable designer/developer Monc’s David Hellsing, who has been a particular friend of the open source community, developing Stylegala originally, the Tripoli CSS framework, and more goodies. DevKick is still a work in progress, but it’s really starting to shape up into a powerhouse resource for web designers.

Other notable resources and fun sites this week:

NetTuts.com

Brought to you by the same people who run PSDtuts. Here’s a link to the Launch Announcement at NetTuts.com.

There is getting to be some great tutorial sites out there for web-dev’ers, with so much out there to learn in this changing field, these make a great addition to your RSS daily feed reads.

ErguvanPlatin.com

An all flash realty development website, with a fabulous splash of colors just to brighten your day, and inspire you to create something colorful!

BestWebGallery.com

If you enjoy viewing a flash site now and then keep an eye on Best Web Gallery, they make some great gallery picks, also some CSS/Web Standards sites. This site created by Nick La of WebDesignerWall.com, another don’t miss site in itself. I’ve got a feeling most of you will be no strangers to Nick’s work.

• Way out in left field check out the Chinese Proverbs vs. the African Proverbs wiki pages for some philosophic thoughts, more great quotes, and in-depth inspiration.

• Until next time, don’t forget to kick up your boots, or would that be ReBoots?
– Don’t miss the next web standards reboot this May 1st ‘08, and be kind to your fellow designers.

IntuitiveDesigns.net

From the typography choices to the fabulous illustration work, this is one classy site! A husband and wife team, namely Koldo Barroso (graphic designer) and Naomi Niles (coder), are producing some fine works from their home base of Madrid, Spain.

freshAIRapps.com

Showcase, tutorials and resources for Adobe AIR. A bit of progressive enhancement ruffles the feathers of some, if you load the design in IE6 you may see a box around the logo, and no clouds in the background. IE6 users would be better off keeping their feet firmly planted on the ground anyways. This brings up a subject for another post… did everyone see Smashing Magazine’s ”Getting Creative w/ Transparency”, post this past week? Great stuff!!

RyJennings.com

An interesting 1-page portfolio concept, with some unusual navigation choices, utilizing the Script.aculo.us js library and a lightbox scheme. Clicking the small text link, “View all Screens” (upper right) loads two panels that have links to more portfolio screenshots, and turns off the panels fading slideshow. A problem with many such slideshow elements is the height must be defined, which does not allow for resizing the text. The famous “Panic Coda - Slider Nav” seems to have found a work around for this flaw.

10voltMedia.com

The vector illustrated Cityscape on the homepage, evidently represents the Chicago skyline. A fair amount of javascript handywork, and the clean color palette make this site a fresh pick! For more real-life skylines, check Mubs’ recent MI blog post, Inspiring Cityscapes for some breath-taking photo renderings.

ChemistryRecruitment.com

A clever mix of html, flash and javascript goodness. There is more functionality here than meets the eye, the site was featured on Smashing Mag’s “Web Form Design: Modern Solutions and Creative Ideas“.

RedBlu.com

Can we as web standards professionals appreciate an all flash site? I don’t have a problem showing this site some love. It’s really a wonderful navigation within. There are times I think, when we might all like to do some flash design. The typography is also quite nice, with the fat slab serif font somewhat resembling Big Mummy by Manfred Klein.

SprintBio.com

Green earth themes are easy to like, when they are not trying to scare you into submission of changing your carbon generating ways by showing the global warming color scheme. The green earth scheme is much more pleasant, blues and greens and peaceful springtime, ahhh bliss. It’s hard to do a theme design like this and not have it look like it was inspired by another site. Take the Viget/Extend web dev blog, it looks a little reminiscent of Taproot Creative if only because the concept is very similar.

HomeDesignFind.com

Home Design Find (HDF) is a web magazine/blog for home design products and ideas.

A nice blog of modern architectural subjects and interior design products, built on WordPress with a blue theme, crinkled paper and transparent tape elements. Many of the Most Gallery sites are predominantly blue palettes this week, just luck of the draw this time around.

Grooveshark.com

A new to me music community, with a clean layout and unique set of features, that looks well worth checking out. For any entrepreneurs in the crowd this enterprise looks like a good study, as it’s a strange mix or “feeding frenzy” as it’s known at Grooveshark, of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing and revenue models, where artists do get paid. My current favorite streaming music website is Slacker, where it is very easy to build your own free personal station(s) from a mix of artists and exploring related artists.

HenryHoffman.com

Succumbing to the “Purple People Eater” this week, this overpowering light-on-dark purple design is simply too powerful to ignore any longer. Looks like a great web design blog too, nice job Henry. Mr. HH can be found kicking it over at the MODx forums.

Interiors.davroc.co.uk

A luxurious and elegant site design, with lucious black-and-white fade-to-color hover treatment done in jQuery. The product photography is exquisite too - yum!

BlueFlavor.com

This redesign is a no-brainer, and will no doubt show up across all the gallery boards. If it was already Blue Flavor, maybe they should of went with Red Flavor, oh well… I don’t know much about branding. A random project loads on the homepage as a dynamic feature.

FlingMedia.com

The new startup studio of Brian Fling (previously with Seattle-based Blue Flavor), showcasing a strong background and focus on mobile design and application. With a carousel nav on the bottoms of some pages, Brian has tossed in a slew of javascript enhancements and some clever illustration work. The site also utilizes a fixed header and sticky footer, reminiscent of a frames layout with overflow scrolling for the main content div. The gridwork includes the Blueprint CSS framework and a variety of split column span layouts throughout the site.

TorontoAfterDark.com

I just love a great event website, this site just went live last week to promote the Toronto Film Festival held Oct.17-24, 2008 just before Halloween. Awesome illustration and visuals throughout this community site. The video clips are already rolling in. The festival features new horror, sci-fi, fantasy, action, animated and cult films from around the world.

WiredGamesCafe.co.uk

A community site for gamers, some great vector illustration and interesting use of background images.

SunRealtyobx.com

A sunny realty portal in vivid colors for the touristy Outer Banks region, some in-depth programming features. Vacation rental listings too, those might be affordable on a web designer income.

Medianomaly.com

This site was worth a second look for me, my initial distraction with it was it should be called “Medianonymous”, the designer’s name (Brian James Ledebur) just above the contact form isn’t easy to find. Referring to yourself in first person across the site just seems like bad practice for a portfolio site. The My Process section outline, 3D logo and overall layout and colors are the highlights.

GorillaCoffee.com

A sharp flash-based website, with most of the usability problems an all-flash site will have. Namely it can’t be indexed by the search engines, individual pages can not be bookmarked, or clicking the browsers back button will dump the whole site. This one has some nice typography, and is simple enough to navigate, they didn’t do too badly. The “Gorilla” marketing techniques of a web standards html version site, would really enhance the flash version.

MaxShaman.com

If you don’t like any of my picks this week, you are welcome to take out your frustration(s) on the voodoo doll, in this flash site, with some accessibility features. I think Max is having a little fun, the word shaman means, a priest who uses magical powers.

eddidit.com

Last but not least this week, my friend and fellow “Black Swamper” Ed Hall seems to have done a bit of a refresh on his portfolio site. Ed’s skills in the illustration dept. are just dazzling.

That’s it for this week.
Peace… Out!

subdued.net

chrisgarrettmedia.com

levelopacity.com

There is some PNG mastery going on here have a look. From the Main_Frame, Project_Modules and Transmit_Message console –to the sticky footer and spacerbot clearing div’s, this design has some far-out futuristic fun.

ridechicago.com

A slick and ambitious piece of commercial work and .asp coding for Chicagoland motorcycle riders.

truebluetitan.com

A Wordpress workhorse

funkyvenues.com

An interesting take on a dark pink classy website, to quote Pat Travers, “Life in London… is bittersweet!”. There are some interesting code comments in this weeks picks, like “Kitten Murdering CSS” followed by IE6 and 7 hacks. Who said designers don’t have a sense of humor, they are kidding right… ?!

breezelegalsolutions.com

Legal software offering, a light-on-dark design with a nice palette of blues, greens, and umbers.

blog.medianotions.de

A German web dev & design blog with some tasty transparency and illustration work, there’s even some demos. I just love hacking code in a different language than English, it’s all greek, but the concepts are the same. Spotted this site in the MODxCMS.com forums in the “You and Your Sites” threads, a great way to gather the latest intelligence and inspiration, and even try your hand at being a critic. You’ll learn plenty about your own design bias that way. You’ll find such a category in most CMS support forums, for people to show off their latest work.

balticproducers.com

thethingswemake.co.uk

Meet Mike Kus, a well-rounded designer from Bognor Regis, West Sussex, UK. The portfolio contains some lovely works in a variety of colorful media.

benjordan.net

Navigant Consulting

With this post we are launching a new feature here on MostInspired called the Weekly Top Standards.
Each week we will pick the Top 10 website designs and/or web developer resources from the feeds for the previous week. A new MostInspired mini-gallery each week.

Thanks to Mubs and David B. for bringing me on board here at MI, as a part of the crew.
We’ve got some other exciting ideas on inspiration for design geeks so stay tuned for those.
Until next time and without further adieu here are this weeks chosen few:

Edgepoint Church

http://www.edgepointchurch.com

Site by 47m - www.fortysevenmedia.com

avalonstar:distortion

http://avalonstar.com/

Singularity Concepts

http://singularityconcepts.com

Pixellated-grunge with a retro palette and some flair.

Calgary website design | Pump Interactive

http://www.hellopump.com

markItUp! a jQuery plugin WYSIWYG text area editor

http://markitup.jaysalvat.com/home/

markItUp! a jQuery plugin WYSIWYG text area editor - cool site and resource.

noedesigns

http://www.noedesign.com

45royale

http://www.45royale.com

Spring tnvacation

http://spring.tnvacation.com/

Another hot one!
This series of vacation sites gets refreshed for all four seasons of the year.
I have never seen a slouch in the bunch yet, typically evoking a nostalgic memorabilia sort of theme, that conjures up memories of long-lost family vacations growing up as a kid. I would love to get a peek at the control panel powering all of these content managed sites.

960 Grid System

http://960.gs/

960 Grid System, it’s a resource and a site pick.
Check out this ultra-slimmed-down CSS framework with visual grid aids.

Viget Labs Inspire

http://www.viget.com/inspire

Do yourself a favor and sign-up for their feeds.
Viget’s Flickr Inspiration Pool is a website gallery in itself.