Need some inspiration to craft your own web portfolio? Just take a look at the 22 listed below and I’m sure that you will find something to help you along the way. Be sure to click through to each site to explore the fine details and different areas of each portfolio.

Enjoy!

For more web design tutorials check out the new tutorial site, The Tutorialist.

For more web design tutorials check out the new tutorial site, The Tutorialist.

Got your own favorites? Comment here!

For more web design tutorials check out the new tutorial site, The Tutorialist.

Today, I’ve collected 30 web design of international web designers. It can be nice to see the pros at their best. I’ve gone with a wide range of designers – from large companies, to small, single person portfolios. Keep in mind that a lot of designers with beautiful sites have already been featured in my two previous posts – so check those out too! I hope that no matter what project you are embarking on, something here can help you out. Enjoy!

Got your own you would like to add? Just comment!

For more web design tutorials check out the new tutorial site, The Tutorialist.

Sites

A lot of times, there are just a few sites out there in which every article is a must-read to learn more about web design. I’ve compiled ten of my favorite resources that I read every day to get my fill of design news, resources, tutorials, articles, and practices. Most of these you have probably heard of – some may be new – but either way, all ten of these sites deserve your visits and you deserve to read their articles. So dive on in!

1. Smashing Magazine – A site devoted to compiling resources for designers, Smashing Magazine is a great place to stay on top of the latest web design trends and news.
   

Popular Articles

• 83 Beautiful WordPress Themes You Probably Haven’t Seen
• 50 Beautiful CSS Based Web Designs In 2006
• 53 CSS Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without

2. Noupe – Noupe is a web developer’s paradise of resources.
   

Popular Articles

• 60+ Unusual WordPress Blog Designs
• 101 CSS Techniques Of All Time
• 40+ Extremely Beautiful Icon Sets Hand Picked From DeviantArt

3. David Airey – An incredible designer, and a resourceful blogger, David Airey is a great place to learn about design, designers, and web design. That’s a lot of design!
   

Popular Articles

• 5 Important Design Aspects Of Any Website Or Blog
• 20 Questions Clients Ask Before Choosing A Designer
• First Steps To Graphic Design Pricing

4. You The Designer – YTD has been in my RSS reader for quite some time now – this information is simply too valuable to miss out on. Get a taste for the articles below:
   

Popular Articles

• Common Design Scams
• 6 Things Every Designer Should Have
• New “Out Of This World” Trend In Web Design

5. WPCandy – WPCandy is a site all about WordPress, WordPress themes, and WordPress news. This resource is for all you WP developers out there!
   

Popular Articles

• Sites – Inspirational collection of designs.
• The WordPress Starter Theme Project
• 10 (WordPress) Twitter Users You Should Follow

6. Fuel Your Creativity – An overall great resource for design in general, Fuel Your Creativity has an amazing and inspiring web design section that must be checked out.
   

Popular Articles

• 40 Minimalist Web Designs
• 24 Kick Ass Portfolio Designs

7. WP Designer – WP Designer has been the starting point for many web designers and developers out there, including myself, so don’t pass up this incredible resource of knowledge.
   

Popular Articles

• 6 Over The Top Blog Designs
• How To Design A WordPress Theme
• So You Want To Create WordPress Themes Huh?

8. Just Creative Design – JCD is another one of my favorite resources for web design articles and inspiration. Read a couple of articles and you’ll be hooked.
   

Popular Articles

• 101+ Places To Get Design Inspiration
• 99 Sites All Designers Must Know About
• 13 Signs You’re A Bad Graphic Designer

9. Fadtastic – Fadtastic is a web design trends journal that goes all-out and in-depth with web design.
   

Popular Articles

• Don’t Make Me Think – A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability
• 25 Ways To Improve Your Site In 5 Minutes
• Beautiful Sites With No (Or Very Few) Images

10. A List Apart – Put quite simply by ALA, “For People Who Make Websites.”
    

Popular Articles

• Design Is In The Details
• Saving The Spark – Developing Creative Ideas
• Findability, Orphan Of The Web Design Industry

11. Web Designer Wall – A beautifully designed website with some beautifully written articles, you can’t go wrong with WDW.
    

Popular Articles

• Typographic Contrast And Flow
• SEO Guide For Designers
• jQuery Tutorials For Designers

12. Net Tuts – If you’re a web designer or developer and you haven’t heard of Net Tuts, you probably shouldn’t call yourself a web designer or developer. Enough said.
    

Popular Articles

• How To Build A Maintainable Site Using CushyCMS & Twitter
• 15 Resources To Get You Started With jQuery From Scratch
• From PSD To HTML, Building A Set Of Website Designs Step By Step

13. Tracey Grady – My deepest apologies to Tracy, with whom I mixed up a link. Check out this incredible article: 10 Seamless Website Designs
    
    Popular Articles

    • Making A Bigger Impact With Your Design Skills
    • Interview: Fifty Designers Current Favorite Typefaces
    • Reasons For Keeping Your Web Portfolio Short And Sweet

    Inspiration

    I’m a big fan of inspiration – from CSS galleries to news feeds, inspiration is everywhere and is never lacking in numbers. Here are ten inspirational websites to help you with your web design process and ability. I am no advocate of copying or replicating a website design, however there is nothing wrong with putting your own twist on someone’s work. So be a true designer – get creative!

14. CSS Remix – A fresh blend of the best designed web 2.0 websites.
    

15. Unmatched Style – Unmatched Style offers the ability to browse their designs by certain tags making it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for.
    

16. Kreativuse – A relatively new site, Kreativuse offers a regularly updated inspiration section along with several articles linking to great posts from around the design world.
    

17. Design Flavr – Design Flavr is a great place to read design-related articles while at the same browse through their inspirational site gallery.
    

18. Web Creme – A clean site dedicated to showcasing the best of the web.
    

19. Best Web Gallery – A CSS gallery with so many sites you’ll get lost in a matter of minutes. This is the place to come for endless inspiration.
    

20. Screen Fluent – With over 7,000 submissions, Screen Fluent is another place to lose yourself in the inspiration.
    

21. Screenalicious – Sporting almost 10,000 submissions, Screenalicious offers endless web design inspiration.
    

22. Full Single – The front page of Full Single offers a lone preview of one web design. To see dozens more incredible designs, just browse through the archives.
    

23. We Love WP – A CSS gallery that focuses on web designs running on the WordPress platform.
    

24. I Love Typography – A fantastic website for typographical inspiration on the web.
    

25. Fave Up – A user-driven website with inspirational sections on logos, business cards, and of course, web design.
    

Tutorials

It can be great to read the articles and browse CSS galleries for inspiration, but none of that will do you any good if you can’t design in the first place! Here are ten tutorials to get you started creating beautiful website designs. Remember, it’s all about the journey – not the destination. Just because a final product of one of these tutorials doesn’t interest you doesn’t mean the tutorial is worthless. Complete each tutorial step by step and you will walk away from the process knowing so many new techniques and styles that you’ll be able to start designing your own websites.

26. Professional, Clean Hosting Layout – How to design a simple, clean, and professional hosting website design.
    

27. Making Your Own Portfolio Web Page – How to design a personal portfolio web design in Photoshop.
    

28. Tutzor – Tutzor shows us how they redesigned their website with this well organized PS tutorial.
    

29. Aqua Layout – A tutorial walking you through the process of designing a simple “aqua” style website.
    

30. Design Studio Layout – This is a great resource to show you how to design a layout that a design studio may use.
    

31. Real Estate Layout – As millions of real estate agents move online, it can never hurt to have the knowledge to design a real estate website.
    

32. How To Slice A Web Design – A video tutorial walking you through the process of properly slicing and dicing a PSD image into usable web design images.
    

33. Create A Sleek, High-End Web Design From Scratch – PSD Tuts shows us how to design a nice website design through this in-depth and thorough tutorial.
    

34. From PSD To HTML, Building A Set Of Website Designs Step By Step – Net Tuts walks us through the coding portion of building a very professional looking web design.
    

35. How To Create A 3D Shelf Element Similar To Dragon Interactive – PSD Tuts shows us how to create that sleek looking shelf element seen at Dragon Interactive’s website.
    

Articles

Articles are the bread and butter of this post. I want to show you all some articles that will truly help you take your designs to the next level. From inspiration posts to guides, any of these articles can, and will, help you with the creative process of website design.

1. 30 Most Inspirational Designer Web Designs
   A post compiling 30 inspirational web designs from the designers themselves.
2. 30 Most Inspirational Dark Web Designs
   If 30 is the new 20, then dark is the new light. This post is a compilation of beautiful dark web designs.
3. 30 Most Inspirational Light Web Designs
   Here are 30 light web designs to get you inspired.
4. What Does Your Website Say About You?
   David Airey shows you what your website is really saying about you.
5. Free Design Templates
   Smashing Magazine brings us a collection of free design templates.
6. 35 Designers x 5 Questions
   What happens when you ask 35 designers 5 questions? 175 quality responses.
7. 50 Designers x 6 Questions
   The second installment of designing questions brings more practical web-design related questions to the table.
8. 10 Designer’s Checkpoints To Be Aware Of
   Our last article from Smashing Magazine brings you 10 checkpoints that all designers should keep in mind.
9. Footer Design Showcase
   A fantastic collection of inspirational and creative website footers from around the web.
10. What Everybody Ought To Know About Usability And Web Design
    A great article explaining the importance of usability in website designs.
11. A Design Is Finished When…23 Pro Designers’ Opinions
    How do you know when a web design is finished? Here’s what 23 professionals have to say.
12. 30 Websites To Follow If You’re Into Web Development
    If you’re this deep into the article, one would assume that you are into web development. If so, here are 30 sites you should follow.
13. 20 Blog Designs That Stand Out
    Want to stand out among millions of sites online? See how others are doing it and how you can too.
14. 9 Common Reasons A Website Is Not Drawing Visitors
    Having trouble getting visitors onto your site? Perhaps one of these 9 reasons can explain your troubles.
15. 20 Useful Tools To Make Web Development More Efficient
    In the fast paced online world, time is money. So learn how to save time and earn more money!
16. 5 Excuses For Discrimination In Web Development
    Are you discriminating against your visitors? It’s time to find out and right your wrongs.
17. 3 Key Prerequisites Required To Succeed As A Designer
    We all want to succeed, but many designers lack these elements of success. Do you have them?
18. Seven Reasons You Shouldn’t Charge By The Hour
    Are you charging your clients by the hour? If so, you may be hurting your business and your wallet.
19. 11 Ways To Gain Exposure As A Web Designer
    A fantastic post designed to guide you through the process of gaining exposure as a professional designer.
20. 53 Steps To Follow If You Want To Become A Freelance Web Designer
    A list of 53 logical steps to making it as a freelance web designer and developer.

Got something I missed? Drop a comment and let me know!

For more web design tutorials check out the new tutorial site, The Tutorialist.

In this post, I want to explore the countless tools and resource for designing forms, and I want to show you how you can use these tools to your benefit to create the perfect form that will help to maximize conversions, sales, subscribers or for whatever else you may be using your form.

Jump To A Section:

• What To Consider When Designing The Perfect Form
  • Less Is More
  • Context & Assistance
  • Distractions
  • Modals
• Modern Examples Of Forms + Best Practices
  • Social Sites
  • Product Sites
  • Video Sites
  • Game Sites
• Contact Forms
• Web Forms: Tutorials And Resources
  • Form Development
  • Online Tools
• @Twitter
• Further Reading

What To Consider When Designing The Perfect Form

The following sections are meant to inspire you with new ideas to create the perfect form for your own website. Remember, each site has its own purpose and needs when it comes to forms, so while reading this post, keep your audience, site genre, and form purpose in mind.

I want to emphasize simplicity in this post – forms are all about making it as easy as possible for people to give you their time, their money, or their interest. If you have a complicated form that is hard to use, you will lose your readers’ attention.

Less Is More

When creating your form, remember that less is more. The fewer fields your visitors have to fill out, the more of them will actually complete the submission process. Let’s take a look at some online web forms to explore what makes them float or sink.

Facebook

Facebook’s sign up form has only three main text input fields with two additional information objects (birth date and sex). This simplicity has made it easy for millions of people to sign up for their service.

On the other hand, take a look at MySpace’s sign up form.

First and foremost, this form is on an interior page meaning that users had to first visit the home page, then click “sign up.” Second, take a look at how big this form is – I counted fourteen information areas (including the CAPTCHA) for users to fill out. Fourteen! No wonder Facebook has already far surpassed MySpace (according to Alexa).

Twitter

Even though Twitter’s sign up form is on an interior page of the site, I give them respect for making their form extremely simple and easy to fill out. With only four fields and a captcha, signing up is a breeze.

Context & Assistance

Forms can be made easier and more usable through the use of context and field assistance. What this means is that as you are filling out each field, the form is providing feedback to help you make sure you are doing everything correctly. The only true way to understand this is to check out the following picture:

Last.fm uses context assistance to help users identify when they have properly filled out a form. As you can see in the above picture, I got a green check mark for my username and passwords, but a red exclamation for my incomplete email.

These types of assistance save time and help users know that they are using your form correctly. Here are more examples:

Break

Digg

Prominence On The Page

Even if your form is simple and easy to use, it won’t do you any good if your users can’t find it on your site. Having a prominent form, or a link to the form, is essential for streamlining the workflow of your visitors. Let’s take a look at some websites that have found places on their website that make it easy for users to find and use their forms:

WordPress.com

WordPress puts a big button right to their sign-up form at the top of their site, giving it the most prominence, color, and attention.

Once a user clicks through to the sign-up page, the form takes up the entire screen. This form is big, easy to read and use, and simple. With only four fields to fill out, and a check box to click, it really is possible to have an account in seconds.

Netflix

Netflix puts their trial sign-up form right on the home page, right where it counts. With only four fields to fill out, Netflix has made it extremely fast and easy for new visitors to get started on a free trial right away. This has contributed to the companies phenomenal success, having delivered over 1 billion movies.

Let’s compare this to Blockbuster who tries to offer a very similar service.

Take a look at their very content-heavy, image-overloaded homepage. So you want to sign up eh? Here are the options that they give you: a tiny link below the navigation and an image placed among advertisements on the right side. That’s it. Who do you think has more members?

Once you get to the registration form, you’ll find what appears to be a quick and easy form to fill out.

Distractions

Distractions can make or break a form. Ideally, once you have a user filling out a form, you want it to be quick and easy to fill out. The last thing you want is for the user to see another link of interest that takes them away from your form. These distractions often come when a website fails to optimize their registration page to reduce the distractions to a minimum.

When you are designing your form, keep in mind that you want people to actually finish filling it out. The fewer distractions that prevent them from doing this, the better. Often times this means getting rid of your sidebar, footer, and in some cases, a header, in order to give your form the most attention on the page.

Let’s take a look at Deviant Art. This website, normally packed with images and links, really cleans up its form page to remove any distractions, giving visitors straight, unblocked access.

A website that does similarly well in reducing distraction is Fresh Books. Stripping away every part of their website aside from their logo, navigation, and contact number, Fresh Books really puts emphasis on their forms to maximize registrations.

Windows Live follows suit by stripping away every link on the site and leaving only their logo and their form, front and center on the page.

Finally, Yahoo does a wonderful job of putting focus on their sign-up form for their mail service. Leaving only their logo and the form, users are pushed to complete the registration process.

Modals

Modals are a very new, and growing way, to build a unique, usable, and aesthetic form. A modal is a pop-up window that dims or darkens the background elements to reduce distractions and put maximum emphasis on the form. When done well, this method of form design will provide for a great experience for users and make registration a breeze. Let’s take a look at some websites, that are using modal windows to house their forms.

Reddit uses a modal window for both a login and registration form. Also keep in mind the ‘less is more’ rule when looking at Reddit’s form, which only has five fields.

The form on Hall Pass uses a very simple, minimalist modal form with only four fields to fill out! Not only does the form look great, but it is also very easy to use.

Meebo also uses a modal form. One minor thing that detracts from this modal window is the left half of the pop-up. It provides reasons for why people should be registering, but it is logical to assume that if someone has clicked the register link, they know why they want to sign up and what service they are signing up for.

Resources For Working With Modals

Modal Dialogues Using CSS & Javascript
jqModal : Minimalistic Modaling For jQuery
WordPress Plugin: SimpleModal Contact Form (SMCF)

Modals are a great way to work with forms, but be careful about your audience when using them. Older, less tech-savvy users may be less familiar with modals and might be inclined to think that it is some sort of pop-up advertisement.

Modern Examples Of Forms + Best Practices

To help you get ideas and inspiration for your own personal form, I’ve compiled a list of web forms organized by the type of site that they are on. When looking through these forms, keep in mind a few things:

• Simplicity – how many fields are required?
• Audience – who is the form targeted to?
• Prominence – where is the form on the page? Is it hard to find, or easy to see?
• Distractions – how much focus is put on the form?

Social Sites

Myspace

Twitter

Design Float

Meebo

Deviant Art

WordPress

Delicious

Reddit

Furl

Plurk

Facebook

Tipd

Stumble Upon

Mixx

Propeller

News Vine

Digg

Last.fm

Linked In

Ning

Product Sites

Adobe

Tick Spot

Mint

Blockbuster

Poll Daddy

Mail Chimp

Netflix

Fresh Books

Threadless

Video Sites

YouTube

Blip.tv

Break

Clevver

Daily Motion

Hulu

Metacafe

Veoh

Vimeo

Game Sites

Kongregate

Addicting Games

Miniclip

HallPass

Armor Games

Arcade Temple

Nonoba

Contact Forms

Contact forms get their own section in this post because they are different than any of the other sign up/registration forms that have been featured thus far. Contact forms serve a different purpose – getting in touch with someone – thus needing their own design style and rules.

Often times people figure that all a contact form needs is a few fields and a submit button. True, but why not be creative and try something different? Through the use of colors, icons, and other design styles, you can make your contact form stand out from the crowd and make it more usable and user-friendly.

Here is a collection of 20 beautiful and unique contact forms. While looking through these forms, keep the following in mind: color, layout, spacing, icons, text positioning, and the design of the submit button. Each of these elements help to make a contact form original and creative. Find a style that you like, and work with it to make it your own.

Frexy

Fling Media

Created 201

Chemistry Recruitment

Alex Cohaniuc

Intuitive Designs

Ordered List

Five Cent Stand

Swiths

Pixel Resort

Design Disease

Veerle

Sidebar Creative

Qwert City

Swfir

Web Forms : Tutorials and Resources

I have compiled a brief list of tutorials and online resources to help you get started creating the perfect form. Be sure to check out the online resources at the end of this section that offer great form creation for very low prices.

Form Development

Prettier Accessible Forms

A CSS Stylesheet Collection For Web Forms

Semantic Horizontal Forms

Trimming Form Fields

Functional Pretty Forms

Styling Web Forms Using CSS

CSS: Fun With Forms

Ajax Auto-Suggest Auto Complete Text Field

Really Easy Field Validation

Online Tools

Wufoo

Jotform

Icebrrg

@Twitter

When writing this post, I consulted a couple of my Twitter followers to get their opinions on the use of forms in modern web design. I posed the question, “What is the most important element of design for a web form?” Here is what they said:

@Brendan_McNally – Getting it filled out>>.Striking the balance between too much information and true purpose or analysis.

@bryanzmijewski – Using fewer form fields will increase conversions (whether it be transactions, accounts or newsletters).

@WilhelmR – Context Popups with help/examples how to fill the fields. Kind of like those in in-text ads, but less annoying

@Steve Moseley – I would say “readability” see the fields clearly and understand what to put where – I mainly employ white-space for this

@Aaron Is Here – The submit button. Why? If for no other reason then the fact that windows and mac default submit buttons look nothing alike.

@Kyle Roussel – I believe a form cannot be intimidating – i.e. everything “above the fold” and not spread over multiple pages.

Further Reading

Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms

CSS Based Form: Modern Solutions

Web Form Design: Modern Solutions And Creative Ideas

For more web design tutorials check out the new tutorial site, The Tutorialist.

Music web sites have evolved over time to become one of the most diverse and creative genres of web designs. Every website is unique, has its own purpose, and speaks to its audience in a different way.

For web designers, one factor that must always be kept in mind is the target audience of the site you are designing. If you make a music layout for a business site, you’ll end up with problems. This post is an extensive, growing collection of music sites that do a wonderful job of designing for their audience. Every element is targeted to help each site achieve some sort of goal – whether it be ad clicks, CD sales, MP3 downloads, or newsletter subscriptions.

Web Design Trends In Music Sites

As you browse this gallery, there will no doubt be some trends that start to arise between this very diverse set of sites. First, and most notably, is the use of flash. More and more sites are using flash to create that “wow” effect to help lure potential customers into the site.

Second, is the prominence of sound clips that play when the page loads. To most designers, this is a no-no that is an automatic turn-off. However, when keeping in mind the audience of the site, these sound clips help to give viewers a taste of what product they are looking at.

Third, splash pages have taken a rise in the music industry. As a portal into the actual website, these splash pages serve the purpose of drawing viewers in by showcasing their best content, sound clips, pictures, and videos. Like the second trend, splash pages are generally bashed by the design industry, but again, keep in mind the audience of each site.

Finally, another trend that seems to be taking a rise is abstract content organization. Instead of being confined to grids, tables, columns, and rows, many music sites are breaking the mold by using more images, video, artwork, and random text placement. This trend has allowed the online music industry to become one of the most diverse and creative sectors of the web design world.

Note: More sites will be added over time, so check back later if you’re looking for more inspirational music websites.

Inspirational Music Websites

Here is the showcase of the most inspirational music websites. While browsing these sites, keep in mind content organization, layout, and audience.

Pandora

Pandora’s internet radio service is very simplified in its design. The left side of the screen is devoted towards music, the right side towards ads. This creates a good balance between content and images.

Salted Soul

Salted Soul uses a paper-style design with strips of paper as the navigation and what appears to be a poster with lists of dates. Salted Soul starts playing music upon load.

Imaginex Studios

This visually oriented site uses flash to create a new type of visual navigation that uses floating orbs. Each orb is directed to a new page. Imaginex also has a music player in the lower right to give sound samples to visitors.

Celine Dion

Celine Dion’s website uses the top portion to advertise her latest CD and the middle to showcase pictures and the site navigation. She also has music playing on the site in a noticeable area so people can at least pause it if they aren’t interested in listening.

Double Punkt

Even though I can’t read it, Double Punkt’s website is very creative and original by organizing the homepage like a comic book with handwritten fonts and a music player that blends in to the content.

Beta Clan

Another flash site, Beta Clan offers a cut up map that, on hover, reveals the site’s navigation. To some, this can be very visually appealing and cool, but to others it takes to long to find information and relevant content.

Rihanna Now

Rihanna’s site showcases a picture of herself, a video in the middle of the content, and an ad for her CD in the right sidebar. This is a very simplified site that gives off the essence of her music and style.

Less The Band

Less The Band shows visitors a list of their songs that can be played on click. This allows visitors to find songs that they like and streamlines the purchasing process. A sleek top navigation makes finding the way around the site a breeze.

Lavitae Media

This centered design offers a splash page for navigation deeper into the site. This design is simple and clean and offers music demos and record information right at the top of the page for easy access.

Year of The Gentleman

Featuring a prominent background image, Year Of The Gentlemen uses a blog-style layout with content on the left side, addition information and ads on the right side. With two levels of horizontal navigation at the top of the page, this site is quick and easy to navigate.

Curve Music

After clicking through a splash page, Curve Music presents us with a flash layout that starts playing music on load. This layout is very simplified, offering a couple sections of content and a bold navigation to help viewers find their way around the site.

Kong Tiki

Kong Tiki is a very retro-style site that uses images and big typography to help visitors navigate the site. Kong Tiki showcases their videos right in the center of the page with a video selector at the bottom of the page. I was unaware that these were videos however until I clicked them.

Free Steppa

Flash, big images, and navigation on either side of the page helps to make Free Steppa a unique and creative concept, although it can be hard to determine what is a link and what isn’t.

The Gap

This magazine style blog layout gives The Gap a clean and organized feel. The Gap uses a clean horizontal navigation along the top of the page with two images to represent the featured articles.

Bloc Party

The Bloc Party site is very unique because it has a video set as the background of the content. Using transparency and a grid layout, finding relevant text and navigation is quick and easy.

Luca Guerrieri

After navigating through a splash page, the Luca Guerrieri site shows us a full screen image with navigation along the the bottom. A pop-up audio panel gives visitors access to sample sound clips.

Kenny Chesney

After navigating through another splash page, Kenny Chesney’s site has a large background image that uses additional images for navigation. Overall this is a very cluttered site, making it hard to navigate through to individual pages, but at the same time the images and unique structure give this site a flair of creativity and originality.

Excuse Me Moses

A single column, content heavy site on a dark background, Excuse Me Moses has a clear navigation with a blog-style layout putting content first for visitors.

Workbench Music

Workbench Music uses a centered content column on top of a large background image to help set their content apart from the rest of the page. A very simple navigation with some images and a few lines of text helps create a very minimalist feel that allows for uncluttered navigation.

Rascal Flatts

The site for the band Rascal Flatts uses a flash base to sport a large background image and abstract navigation. Each ’splatter’ of navigation, upon hover, reveals several layers of sub navigation. While visually appealing, this may detract from the accessibility and ease-of-use of the site.

A Butterfly Mind

Another flash site, A Butterfly Mind, after the initial loading time, uses large images, sound clips, and a contrasting navigation to help visitors find what they are looking for. An ad for the CD in the right sidebar helps visitors listen to the music and purchase the album.

AC DC

AC DC has a grungy, desktop-style site. A fly follows the cursor around the page adding a creative twist to the site. I found it difficult to tell which objects on the site were links, but I was able to find the button to mute the sound that automatically plays.

Bluri

Bluri, a news site, has a large dedicated music section with a grungy, yet futuristic feel to it. Categories, large images, and a defined header make it easy to navigate and find information.

Fever

Fever is one of the more original and creative sites in this list simply because the entire site consists of a background image and a massive navigation. Links range from different photos, to upcoming tours, to information about the band, and more.

Last.fm

A cleaner, more ‘2.0′ style site, Last.fm lets you choose your own music that you like, and gives you recommended songs based on your listening preferences.

Slipknot

Slipknot’s website has a large background image with a vertical navigation along the left side of the page. The site is a great fit to the sound of their music, which they have automatically play when the site loads.

Grooveshark

Grooveshark, where you can listen to any song for free, has a beautiful, clean, and organized feel. A prominent search box makes it easy to find a song and the many other options help to find new songs that are by the same artist, or are in the same genre.

eMusic

eMusic, iTunes “cheaper, cooler cousin,” has a very bold, typography oriented site. Bright contrasting colors help to draw readers’ eyes to the main body of the site, which entices them to join their service for 50 free downloads.

Stereo Gum

Another newspaper/magazine style, blog-themed site, Stereo Gum does a great job of putting content and navigation at the top of the page allowing users to find what they are looking for as fast as possible.

Turn Table Lab

This site caught my eye because of its unique and original content organization: a solid navigation followed by two rows of product categories. This helps people find what they are looking for, rather than having to scour through hundreds of entries.

Jason Mraz

Jason’s site follows a hand drawn, grungy website style that gives it a very retro, yet original feel. The site takes a few seconds to load all of the flash, but after it does users are greeted by his voice, which can be turned off with a convenient switch at the bottom of the page.

Flux Blog

Flux Blog uses white space to the max. With a simple blog layout and a healthy amount of white space, the site is easy to skim and read.

Mix Unit

Mix Unit is a product-oriented “hip hop shop.” The site has some flashy graphics, good organization, and great categorization to help users find products that are just right for their needs.

Blink 182

Blink 182’s site uses transparency on top of a grunge background. With a video at the top center of the page, social sites to the left, and blog entries to the right, this band does a great job of putting three critical elements of the site right where it counts.

Acceptance

Acceptance has one of the most professional sites I have seen, using subtle gradients, clean navigation, organized articles, solid typography, and great graphics. This site is both aesthetically appealing and very usable for people new to the internet.

BET

BET features a top navigation with a large media player right below, in the middle of the screen. This immediately draws eyes to the videos that they have chosen, and the numerous other videos listed below. With a bright, colorful background, BET’s website is clean, professional, and visually attractive.

Yahoo Music

Yahoo’s take on music is very clean and organized, relying on images and colors to draw reader’s eyes to where they need to go. With a prominent featured article, and highlighted videos, Yahoo makes finding their best content easy and quick.

Music

Music.com has a great visual organization of thumbnails to help guide readers eyes down the page. With more important, larger, images at the top, followed by rows of smaller, less important, thumbs, it is easy for visitors to discern important content from not-as-important content.

MTV Music

MTV’s site uses bright illustrated backgrounds, combined with creative navigation (searching for artists by letter), to create a fun, entertaining, online haven for music news, videos, and lyrics.

Comcast Music

Comcast uses a very 2.0 look to create an organized, attractive design. Using a large content slider at the top, Comcast is able to feature the most important content on the site using the least amount of screen real estate possible.

BBC Music

BBC’s website is so great because of the customization options it offers to viewers. With the ability to collapse and expand content sections that may or may not be relevant to readers, BBC makes it easy for readers to skip the stuff that is meaningless to them and jump right into the important content.

My Play

Even with an unappealing header gradient, My Play does well when it comes to organizing their content, using a large image slider at the top of the page, with categorized content in the sidebar and lower down on the page.

Katy Perry

Kate Perry’s splash page uses vintage images and faded, retro, colors to help set the tone and mood of her site. With contact information, navigation, and even an ad for the Kate Perry store, this splash page has everything users need to get started exploring the site.

John Legend

With strong typography, a bold navigation, and content organized through the effective use of of white space, John Legend’s site is clean, professional, and speaks to his name in a great way.

Cardinology

The most prominent portion Cardinology is the time machine style pictures in the center of the page. With a nice space background, and a boxed navigation, this site is a creative and original site in the music scene.

Kid Rock

With an abundant use of transparency, a centralized navigation, and a prominent media area, Kid Rocks’ website is very well targeted towards his audience, allowing them to see his pictures, videos, and listen to his music all at the click of a mouse.

I Am Duffy

I Am Duffy uses a strong black website with white text and a lone, stencil-style, image to create a creative website. A prominent audio area on the right side of the page makes it easy for visitors to listen to sound clips quickly and easily.

Pure Volume

Clean, simple, and organized, Pure Volume is one of my favorite additions to this list, as suggested by one of our fabulous readers. With beautiful buttons, beautiful lists, and a straightforward navigation, this site is very easy to find ones way around.

Hype Machine

With vibrant colors and wonderful typographic contrast, Hype Machine is a very aesthetically appealing site. Lots of fine and subtle details make this site unique and helps it to stand out from the crowd of music websites.

Twisten.fm

A great new concept that allows users to connect the music they listen to with the music that people on Twitter are listening to. A smooth, solid colored and simple layout gives Twisten.fm a very solid design.

Cons Of Music Websites

When writing this post, my internet and computer would often freeze after I had opened a few tabs of these different websites. A major factor that contributed to this freezing was the fact that so many sites utilize flash, audio, and splash pages. While these factors may be appropriate to the regular visitors of each site, I found them to be unprofessional and irritating – especially when I couldn’t find a mute button for the music.

Pros Of Music Websites

What is great about music websites is their creativity, diversity, and originality. Each site has its own taste that caters to its viewers making for an interesting and unique online experience. Many websites use creative content organization, bright and vibrant backgrounds, and interesting new methods of navigation.

In Conclusion

After creating this post, I had new design styles in mind that I wanted to try out. Every website had some little bit of it that was unique and creative to help it stand out from the crowd. In conclusion, you should walk away with the following in mind:

1. Creativity – be unique!
2. Remember your audience – Don’t design a music site like you would a business site, it just won’t work.
3. Content organization – There are a lot more ways to organize content (images, text, and video) than just a two or three column layout. Try some new method of organization to make your site stand out.

What are your thoughts on music websites? Which was your most or least favorite? Why?

For more web design tutorials check out the new tutorial site, The Tutorialist.

Jump To A Section:

• What Is White Space?
• How To Use White Space Effectively
  • Line Spacing
  • Margins
  • Minimalist Does Not Equal White Space
  • Headings
  • Images
• White Space In Modern Web Design
• @ Twitter
• Further Reading

What Is White Space?

Put simply, white space is the space between different elements of a design – the area between text, images, paragraphs, headers, footers, links, etc. It is the space between different elements on a page, the space between letters, and the space between lines in a paragraph.

White space allows for easier scanning of a website. It reduces the amount of text visitors see all at once and makes reading much easier. It allows for the visual separation of design elements without adding any new elements such as visible lines or boxes. It is clean, looks professional when used correctly, and gives a site an uncluttered and fresh feel.

White space is sadly one of the most underrated elements of a strong web design. Just because it isn’t shiny or glossy doesn’t mean it isn’t important or essential to a website.

To start our exploration into this subject, let’s take a look at a couple of websites that are using white space effectively in their design.

1. Made By Sofa

Made By Sofa creates a strong design message by using a large image at the top of the site with content and navigation below. Sofa works with white space to separate three elements: titles, paragraphs, and tagline. Take a look at the following close-up:

Note: Shaded areas represent white space

This creates an organized and separated feel making it easier for readers and potential clients to scan their website quickly and efficiently.

2. Information Architects

Information Architects creates a clean and uncluttered feel on their website by using white space to separate their logo, text, paragraphs, and headings. The following image is a close-up of the Information Architects website.

Note: Shaded areas represent white space

How To Use White Space Effectively

Using white space effectively can be tricky business. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Line Spacing

The white space between lines in a paragraph makes all the difference when it comes to readability and scannability on a web page. If the lines are pushed too close together, it becomes nearly impossible to scan. If the lines are spread too far apart, your words will begin to float apart and feel disconnected from one another.

Line Spacing Is Too Close

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum sapien. Vivamus sit amet velit ut lorem luctus facilisis. Suspendisse potenti. Vestibulum augue turpis, ultricies quis, scelerisque id, pellentesque ac, ligula. Integer ullamcorper. Pellentesque facilisis. Nunc iaculis mi sodales elit.

Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. In blandit rutrum felis. Etiam malesuada.

Line Spacing Is Too Wide

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum sapien. Vivamus sit amet velit ut lorem luctus facilisis. Suspendisse potenti. Vestibulum augue turpis, ultricies quis, scelerisque id, pellentesque ac, ligula. Integer ullamcorper. Pellentesque facilisis. Nunc iaculis mi sodales elit.

Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. In blandit rutrum felis. Etiam malesuada.

You want your line spacing to be just in the middle of the above two examples – not too much, not too little. For information on controlling your line spacing with CSS, read this article on the CSS line height property.

2. Margins

A margin is the space around a particular element in a design. CSS Margins are a great way to control this space to your advantage. When working with margins, there are a few things to remember:

1. Consistency
Keep your margins consistent throughout your layout. The more consistent the spacing, the more organized and a professional your site will look. When thinking of margins, think in both vertical and horizontal separation, as both have an effect on the overall design.

2. Not Too Much
Don’t make your margins too large. Too much separation can make a website feel disconnected, as seen in our line spacing example above. Also keep in mind that there are only a certain amount of pixels that can fit on a screen, so don’t waste too much screen real estate on margins (unless of course the context of the site calls for such margins).

3. Not Too Little
Remember, we’re learning about white space here, so be sure that there is some! It looks shoddy to have text pressed up against a picture, sidebar, header, navigation bar, or any other element of a design. Keep these spaced out to give your readers room to breathe.

3. Minimalist Does Not Equal White Space

One of the problems in the modern design world is that too many people equate white space with minimalistic. That is just plain wrong. A site can be packed with content, but be very easy to scan and read with a clever use of white space.

Take Smashing Magazine for example. This is a website literally overflowing with content, yet they have managed to make their site easy to scan and read. They were able to achieve this through a careful selection of colors, text sizes, and the use of white space.

Upon closer examination:

Notice how there is visual separation between text and images, between navigation elements, and between the content and the sidebar? This is the effective use of white space.

4. Headings

Headings are a great way for you to separate your content into manageable chunks. By reading this article, you are seeing four different types of headings in use: H1, H2, H3, and H4. These headings are the large, bold, underlined “section headers” that you have been seeing throughout this post.

What you need to look at is the white space above and below these headings, and how they influence the scannability of this post. For example, my H2 tags (the second largest headers) have a 5 pixel separation between the text and the underline. They also have a 15 pixel margin above and below the text. This creates white space to help organize and section the content.

By creating this white space, it becomes much easier for readers to scan through the post and identify which bullet or which heading they would like to learn more about, rather than digging through twenty paragraphs of solid text.

If you’re interested in the CSS used to create my H2 tag, simply copy and paste this code into your style.css file:

h2 {
font-size: 28px;
padding-bottom: 5px;
border-bottom: 3px solid #2a2a2a;
letter-spacing: -1px;
color: #2A2A2A;
margin-top: 15px;
margin-bottom: 15px;
}


5. Images

The separation between images and text can make or break a design. If the words are too close to the picture, the content will become very cluttered and hard to read. If the words are too far from the picture, the post becomes disconnected and loses its flow.

On Web Design Tuts, I use a special class of images to help organize my posts and make them as visually attractive as possible. Whenever I write a post, much like this one, I use the following code for an image:

<img class="imagelist" src=# />

To style this image class in CSS, I did the following:

.imagelist {
border: 5px solid #cacaca;
margin-top: 15px;
margin-bottom: 15px;
}

Notice how I have kept my margins a consistent 15 pixels in both my images and headers?

White Space In Modern Web Design

You now should be aware of why white space is needed: to clean up a site, make it easier on readers, and to appear more professional. You should also have a couple ideas of how to effectively use white space using consistent margins, text separation, and the visual separation of images and headers. However, you may still be wondering what a “good” use of white space really is.

Here are some examples of websites that effectively use white space to help communicate their message to their visitors.

1. Surfstation

Observe how the use of white space has effectively separated the content from the sidebar on Surfstation’s website. It is this separation that helps visitors scan the website, picking out information that is relevant to their own needs.

2. Jason Santa Maria

Jason’s website uses a wise combination of lines and white space to help present his content in a clean and elegant manner.

3. Digital Mash

Digital Mash, the website of Australian designer Rob Morris, utilizes a very simple design with a navigation, main image, and four content areas at the bottom of the page. Notice how the margins are consistent and the copy is very readable through the spacing of text and the use of headings and icons.

4. Odd Web Things

As a type-based website, Odd Web Things uses white space to separate their logo from their sidebar, their sidebar from their portfolio, and their portfolio from their blog.

5. Vitor Lourenco

Vitor’s site uses an all-white background with some typography here and there. A bold navigation, strong links, and simple color scheme make this website work.

@Twitter On White Space

When writing this post, I consulted a couple of my Twitter followers to get their opinions on the use of white space. I posed the question, “Why do you think white space is important in web design?” Here is what they said:

@Brendan – Whites space! I think it is critical in getting focus = conversion and it exudes confidence & professionalism when done well.

@Brandon – So that information and design elements can relate to each other properly, rather than blending in to a big mess of graphics.

@sthursby – When all you have is a couple seconds to entice a visitor into your site, you want the important info easily findable.

@Hyermish – White space gives the illusion of simplicity; sometimes helps to reduce clutter.

@Drew Douglass – My main reason would be to draw focus to a certain element on the page, and to leads eyes through the content.

Further Reading

ALA: Whitespace

Tutorial: Negative Space

On White Space In Graphic Design

CSS: Typography And White Space

For more web design tutorials check out the new tutorial site, The Tutorialist.