Journal: News & Comment

Website designs I like

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I'm not much of a visual web designer, which is why this site looks okay, but is nothing spectacular, and hasn't really changed much since 2000 (despite a colour update). What I have here works okay, and if I were to consider a serious change, I'd probably have to hire someone with real talent to help me with that.

I do admire those other sites (especially other weblog-based ones) that manage to work within the limitations of the medium to create beautiful, readable, usable things. Some examples:

• Subtraction.com - The individual archive pages are particularly clean, informative, and easy to use.
• Stopdesign.com - Right now, Doug Bowman is experimenting with a minimalist look, but I hope he returns to something like his luscious previous version (see the tiny vestigital screenshot). The new one is good, but his earlier semi-abstract headers had lovely jewel-tone colours that made me feel good every time I visited.
• Panic.com - The HTML code is old-school and a bit of a mess, but for a commercial software company their site is so clean and unusual I like it anyway. (Jumsoft.com has a similar approach, and similar code problems.)
• JeffCroft.com - I've worked with Jeff, but the reason we chose to have him help us is that his work, including his website, is both standards-compliant and lovely. I particularly like his "live preview as you type" comments system.
• McSweeny's.net - So spare. So centred. So serifed. So capitalized. It's like the 15th-century woodcut of the Web.

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