Favourite designs?

[Business Brian]

Everytime I surf the internet, and find a really well designed site, I save it to my PC so that I can reference it later - either for looking at specific sections of code, or else issues of presentation.

Does anyone else here do that, and if so, are there any particular favourites that stand out?

[Suzanne]

I think I may doing that from now.

[altyfc]

I used to do that until the likes of TemplateMonster came along.  Now it's so much easier to get a really professional website through one of them.  We find that's fine for in-house purposes, at least, but perhaps less so for the 3rd party websites we do where the requirements might be a little more restrictive.
 
Aaron

[Business Brian]

Yes, I really liked the idea of selling on TemplateMonster templates - but, ultimately, I find them too generic, and that if you're selling website design services then you absolutely need to be able to offer a unique product to each customer.
 
 Sometimes I like to look at the template just to inspire me - sometimes I'll even buy a template just to rip out parts of the graphics or photos, but put it all in a similar but dinstinctly difference design.
 
 I guess it's really an issue of need, though. Plus I enjoy the sens eof experimentation.

[LHall]

I do that as well.. I found a fantastic site that showcases lots of well designed websites, most of them created in Flash. The URL is, www.thebestdesigns.com. I'm also a big fan of design agency Slender Fungus (www.slenderfungus.com), again more Flash based, so can be a pain if you have a slow internet connection.
There are too many badly 'designed' sites on the web, these links show how it should be done..

Regards,
Lesley-anne

[Business Brian]

Heh, web designers are the curse of search engines, though.
 
 Those sites may look pretty, but pretty isn't worth much if no one can find you to look at them.
 
 Namely - if search engines can't rank the sites for their content, then who's going to see your great personal/company website?
 
 Something to think about.

[LHall]

yes that's a major limitation of many of those sites featured, but you can still take a lot from them concerning design and aesthetics. Such websites can still be valuable research, as their templates and concepts are not entirely restricted to Flash, and could be applied to HTML design, or at least provoke people to be a little more inspired when doing their own sites. (I guess that's the arty side in me speaking)

Lesley-anne

[Business Brian]

No, it's a very good point.
 
 I've seen been inspired by a lot of other designs.

[paulhiles]

One of my favourite haunts is the Web Standards Awards site.
 
 CSS Vault is another showcase site that never disappoints!