Best site designs?

pfurey101

The full flash websites are indeed gorgeous but I hope the owners are not depending on their websites to bring them visitors/customers. The search engines wont find them. Then again they probably have huge PPC budgets.

Jim Carrey's site is the biz, well suits his ego

Bonavox

I personally love Matt Brett's site. Excellent use of colour and fonts:

http://mattbrett.com/

Mike_Eile

This tops my list:

http://cure.org

Dave!

Bump

This one is outstanding
http://www.cacaotour.com/

Can't get enough of the contact form at the bottom! *droooooollll*

edit

Oh, and did I mention that it's responsive as f*ck?! Resize your browser there

One Flew Over

I love this site for it simplicity, use of white space with blocks of colour and it's user accessibility.

http://www.segd.org

S.M.B.

Dave! wrote: »

Bump

This one is outstanding
http://www.cacaotour.com/

Can't get enough of the contact form at the bottom! *droooooollll*

edit

Oh, and did I mention that it's responsive as f*ck?! Resize your browser there

Not a fan of that site at all.

There's a lot of completely unnecessary design elements in there that would put me off using it.

Fanny Cradock

Dave! wrote: »

Bump

This one is outstanding
http://www.cacaotour.com/

Can't get enough of the contact form at the bottom! *droooooollll*

edit

Oh, and did I mention that it's responsive as f*ck?! Resize your browser there

The form doesn't render the same in IE 7 or 8 and I reckon there is close to 10mb of background images to download on the home page alone.

Duncan1001011

I'd recommend allday.cc.

It's an excellent showcase of one of the lesser talked about aspects of web design: persuasive copy.

Your design isn't going to convert anybody of the copy was written by a stiff businessman with no regard to the brands identity.

Placebo

whats copy got to do with web design?
You could have the best speech of the world on a really badly designed website, it may still read like the best speech in the world, but it will still be written on a brown paper bag found on the street

Duncan1001011

I think copy has a lot to do with web design. Would allday.cc really work as a design if it didn't have top notch copy?

At the end of the day a web design is a frame for content. I actually think that a decent speech written on a paper bag would have a chance of doing down well. On the flip side however, the greatest design in the world is worth nothing if it is just there to present a wall of lorem ipsum.

Ideally both need to be taken into consideration to make a nice site. Both the content and design would benefit from working off each other.

Placebo

Duncan1001011 wrote: »

. Would allday.cc really work as a design if it didn't have top notch copy?

Honestly, i feel that site is badly designed. So to me it wont make a difference.
However even if it was the best site in the world, the copy could be replaced with random 'Lorem ipsum' copy and it would still look good.

The type of writing, wether 'persuasive' or otherwise, to me, doesn't have any effect on design.

smash

allday.cc.... min €250 daily rate to write copy? Isn't that what marketing teams are for?

And sure he didn't create his website, http://youloveus.co.uk/ did.

Duncan1001011

However even if it was the best site in the world, the copy could be replaced with random 'Lorem ipsum' copy and it would still look good.

I think this is where we are differing. I'm figuring that design is solving problems. To convert more users into paying clients for example. To solve this problem the end design may not look pretty, but if it does the job then it's a good design. Whether it looks pretty or not is superfluous. For example lingscars.com looks crap, but it's usable and I'm never going to forget the site. I've seen it posted on just about every top "bad design" list, it's probably gotten a lot more attention that any other online car shop by looking like such crap.

My point is that design is for solving problems, not making things look pretty. You simply can't achieve anything with a site full of lorem ipsum.

allday.cc.... min €250 daily rate to write copy? Isn't that what marketing teams are for?

If you have a marketing team with competent writers then sure. I'm not sure what his target market is exactly.

And sure he didn't create his website, http://youloveus.co.uk/ did.

Sorry, I'm new here, is this thread specifically for self made sites or something? I didn't mean to imply that he did.

tricky D

I would have thought it was pretty obvious that copywriting has plenty to do with design. Copy is a functional aspect of a website which inputs into the form of the design. Take a look at so many websites with their walls of text on homepages which is a poor way to handle the content. A good web copywriter knows that you generally start with easily digestible snippets and than progress to longer bits of text as the user's interest and attention level rises. The site cited does that with the first 2 pages having copy of about 25 words, then 3 paras of 25 each and then the fuller sell. This reflects the increasing level of interest, though I'm not a fan of how it has been executed into the design form. I doubt that the site wasn't solely created by youloveus, Mr Allday obviously had significant input, possibly beyond just the copy. I don't think his day rate is any issue and what the marketing Dept should be doing and actually do is another matter.

There's a nice article which covers all this with links to further reading: http://uxmyths.com/post/718187422/myth-you-dont-need-the-content-to-design-a-website including using Lorem Ipsum stuffing.

@Duncan, have a look at what Ling has written on this site - interesting stuff. She even did an 'In the Well' http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055793398

smash

Duncan1001011 wrote: »

You simply can't achieve anything with a site full of lorem ipsum.

Nobody said you could. Lorem Ipsum is placeholder text to show a client what their design will look like when copy is added. A designer's job is to create a design, not copy. Therefore copy has nothing to do with design, it's to do with the end result. The two are different. A well designed site should still look well with dummy text.

Dave!

Strange angle this thread has taken... I follow alot of design blogs and aggregators, and read a few books, and have never seen mention of copy as being an important aspect of design. Typography certainly, but not copy... As mentioned, it should look just as good with Lorem Ipsum.

desaparecidos

Length (word count) of copy matters, not the words themselves (except maybe for large titles).

smash

desaparecidos wrote: »

Length (word count) of copy matters, not the words themselves (except maybe for large titles).

Length of copy can be controlled by formatting and styling/features of it's parent container.

Dave!

This is probably a matter for another thread - keep posting sexy designs! With or without nice copy

Duncan1001011

@tricky D That's a nice link, cheers.

@ Dave! Good point Here's a nice site.
good****ingdesignadvice.com

*lol, boards edited the obscenity in the URL. It's goodfu ckingdesignadvice.com/
Without the space.

This one has a nice contact page.
peacock.st/

desaparecidos

smash wrote: »

Length of copy can be controlled by formatting and styling/features of it's parent container.

No it can't, if you have 1000 words you have 1000 words. It's up to content providers to write in a manner that's straight to the point with zero waffle.

smash

desaparecidos wrote: »

No it can't, if you have 1000 words you have 1000 words. It's up to content providers to write in a manner that's straight to the point with zero waffle.

ok then http://devsnippets.com/article/10-transition-effects-the-art-of-showinghiding-content.html

"Length of copy can be controlled by formatting and styling/features of it's parent container."

desaparecidos

smash wrote: »

ok then http://devsnippets.com/article/10-transition-effects-the-art-of-showinghiding-content.html

"Length of copy can be controlled by formatting and styling/features of it's parent container."

That's about hiding text then showing it when appropriate. You still have the overall same amount of words. What is being discussed here is "persuasive copy" or "effective writing", and using as little as possible words when doing that.

BarackPyjama

desaparecidos wrote: »

No it can't, if you have 1000 words you have 1000 words. It's up to content providers to write in a manner that's straight to the point with zero waffle.

Yourself and smash are talking about two different things. You're saying that copy for the web should be properly written and be kept short and to-the-point.

Smash is saying that a good designer's layouts will be flexible/scalable enough to accommodate varying amounts of copy.

You're both right.

The point is that copy writing and design are two completely different things. They compliment each other and, on the web, are closely involved with each other but they're two different disciplines.

Placebo

loving this: https://www.weylandindustries.com/site/david

theyre using html5 boiler plate, forgot to remove/change pink highlight

tricky D

I notice they've changed their Investor Relations content. Some merger/acquisition activity in the offing, perhaps.

Giblet

Placebo wrote: »

loving this: https://www.weylandindustries.com/site/david

theyre using html5 boiler plate, forgot to remove/change pink highlight

Very common

Duncan1001011

Giblet wrote: »

Very common

I'd actually say it might be more of a tip of the hat kind of thing.

Google music also did that.

Giblet

Duncan1001011 wrote: »

I'd actually say it might be more of a tip of the hat kind of thing.

Google music also did that.

They both uses boilerplate directly as a start point. They just didn't remove the selection style. The css styles are copied exactly.

Dave!

http://hellobar.com

I like that one