Design resource: design sites

Slightly redudant title, but whatever.

I’m not sure exactly when I became aware of the wonderful world of CSS/XHTML websites, but I’m pretty sure it coincided with my first visit to CSS Zen Garden. Created by Dave Shea, the garden “aims to excite, inspire, and encourage participation” in the world of CSS designs that allow “complete and total control over the style of a hypertext document…in the hands of those able to create beauty from structure.”

Strolling through the gorgeous entries that designers have contributed in their own free time made me realize that what they were doing was huge. No more tables or cells, these sites were being brought to life from markup and a style sheet. I was hooked.

Sometime later, I added a couple more sites that inspire me. They generally consist of CSS showcases for commisioned sites or designer portfolios, but I also like to draw from elements included in furniture design, item packaging, and clothing trends. As I referenced in “Design resource: daily color schemes,” I will sometimes find a tiny element like a curve or a color that jumpstarts my creative process and will enable me to finish a project.

Here are some of the sites that I visit weekly if not daily, and that I highly recommend checking out, even if its to get a feel for what is played out and over done:

CSS Showcases

• CSS Remix: My personal favorite. They employ a handy rating system and update content often. The sidebar has a nice touch of ajax, and the search feature is handy if you are trying to find that site you liked that has since dropped off the front page (although ordering by rating is not possible, something that would be interesting to see).
• CSS Drive: Slightly more mainstream, and a little busy, this site gets 1 or two updates every couple days.
• CSS Vault: Recently redesigned, this site is a work of art. Features include comments, ratings, and a slew of resources for the learning or stuck designer.
• CSS Beauty (notice the naming trend yet?): Ok, yea yea. Another site. It’s important to note that while you may find duplicate submissions on other sites, due to the plethora of CSS showcase sites available, you can still stumble upon something that nobody else has. I make a habit of skimming the screen shots until something catches my eye, and then browsing onwards. Bookmarks help this process.

Next up are blogs that aggregate the cool goingson of the web and centralize them for you. I’d like to thank Jon Hicks for his great entry on this subject.

Design blogs

• Happy Mundane: A K2 based blog that sorts through the everyday to find the exceptional.
• MoCo Loco: Specializing in “modern contempary design,” get your fix on the lastest and greatest in the furnishings world.
• print & pattern:An excellent resource for patterns. Check out fabrics, wallpapers, cards, staionary, and gift wrap to name a few. If you can put a pattern on it, you’ll probably find it here.

So now we’ve got sites that aggregate cool websites, and sites that aggregate cool designs. So how about the people that design the sites? Surely they have say in whats hot in the world.

Meet the designer blogs

• Binary Bonsai: Home of the great Michael Heilemann, creator of Kubrick and K2 and lately “Invader.” Find out what new css-foo techniques he has learned, or even get insider information on video games that his day job is putting out. Odds are if you read blogs you’ve seen his work.
• hicksdesign: The aforementioned Jon Hicks stores his digital blather on this site. “A small creative studio based in Oxfordshire, UK,” hicksdesign creates amazing branding. Work includes stylemaster logo and icons, skEdit interface icons, and everybody’s favorite: the Firefox and Thunderbird icons for Mozilla.
• 5ThirtyOne: Derek Punsalan maintains a loyal readership at this address. Creator of some amazing wordpress themes, it’s always interesting to get his input on the hot new services that appear on the web. Learn about link tracking, analytics, customizing myspace layouts and much more.
• Jason Santa Maria: Philly based designer who is very vocal about his opinions on where the web is headed. Visit the site for updates on his speaking engagements and latest projects.

And then there are those that just don’t fit anywhere else. The showcases that don’t limit themselves to a genre (unless cool is a category). The sites that exist to inspire.

Everyone else

• NetDiver
• notcot.org
• Daily Type: russian typography site
• Waterhalo: sketchbook based journal
• Web Creme: straight out inspiration

This list barely scratches the surface, and I know it. Do you have a site you like to visit that I didn’t include? Drop me a comment with the url and why you are addicted to it.