The Web’s Most Gorgeously Designed Websites

by Administrator for WebSite Magazine

Stagnant websites simply can’t keep up in the continually evolving online world. Those that update often and experiment bravely with an eye to gorgeous, yet functional design are sure to grab visitors’ attention. These top sites feature striking design elements that help them stand out at the head of the pack.

BBC – Design Across Platforms

Image via BBC.com

BBC’s most recent page design features a look that’s strikingly similar to what you expect in a mobile app. Don’t be surprised if you’re tempted to swipe your finger across your computer screen, even though you don’t have a touch-screen monitor. The Web page features eye-catching images that quickly grab your attention and pull you into the stories. The site uses this same design across all platforms including tablets and smart phones.

Elysium Burns – Bold Typography

Image via elysiumburns.com

A diverse choice of eye-catching sans serif fonts gives Elysium Burns a memorable look. Article titles and site headings sit against subtle CSS image backgrounds. The simple white on charcoal color scheme really allows the shape and flow of the typography to take center stage on this page.

Disney – Highly Responsive Video Design

Image via disney.com

Responsive design is essential for any site, but creating a page that’s user-friendly on any platform is more difficult for some features than others. Disney’s site prominently features high-quality videos, so the challenge of their redesign was maintaining video size and quality across platforms. The result is a simple streamlined design that showcases video beautifully on any device.

Web Design Ledger – Where Serif and Sans Serif Meet

Image via webdesignledger.com

The intriguing look of Web Design Ledger combines both serif and sans serif fonts. The striking difference in font styles throughout the site effectively draws your eye to certain features, such as reader comments. Though this is an unconventional choice of typography styles, it works well in this simple text-heavy layout.

Combadi – High-Impact Images

Image via combadi.com

A growing number of sites now use large, high-impact images on their home pages to draw customers in. Though typography has its place, designs like these allow the eyes to rest a bit and take in something refreshingly different. Combadi features both a large image at the top of the page and a series of smaller images for added eye candy further down.

The Verge – Story Collage Layout

Image via theverge.com

The Verge features a story collage that highlights top features in a clean and visually pleasing way. Each headline is given ample space in its own candy colored box so the titles don’t crowd each other out. Though the site has lots of content, visitors don’t feel overwhelmed thanks to this simple design choice.

USA Today – Customizable Experiences for Every User

Image via usatoday.com

USA Today’s design is simple and clean, making it easy to browse massive amounts of information in a short amount of time. This rigid layout is perfect for a site where readers want to navigate to items of interest as quickly as possible. One of the highlights of USA Today’s site design is the viewing option, which allows readers to choose from a list or grid format. This allows for fast and easy customization to suit the tastes of each visitor.

A List Apart – Extreme Readability

Image via alistapart.com

With so many flashy and colorful design options available, it’s easy to get swept away in the visual aspects of site design and forget about the finer points of readability. This is where A List Apart truly excels. The headlines, subheadings, quotes, and article body all feature clean fonts chosen with reader comfort in mind. The content itself is well-organized and flawlessly edited as well so your eye travels easily from one short digestible paragraph to the next.

Mea Cuppa Sweets & Coffee – Striking yet Simple Color Choice

Image via meacuppa.be

The stunning color choice of Mea Cuppa immediately grabs the visitor’s attention. With a clean palette of black, white, and yellow, the imagery doesn’t take away from the content, but rather makes the viewer want to hang around and feast on the delicious visuals for a while longer. This design proves that less is more and simplicity isn’t inherently boring.

Postable – Fast Functionality

Image via Postable.com

Postable’s purpose is simple. Users sign up for the free service which sends links out to their friends and family asking for updated contact information. Fittingly, the site design for this service is simple and easy to use as well. Three points clearly lay out everything the service does and a short sign up form lets you start in seconds. There’s no clutter, no confusion, and no excess in this functional design.

Oliver Russell – Sleek Graphics and Simple Color Choice

Image via OliverRussell.com

Oliver Russell’s page highlights his marketing services in a sleek design that speaks to his professionalism and Web expertise. The palette features bold warm oranges and yellows with a bright touch of cyan. Finding what you want is easy so visitors never get lost on this well-designed page.

University of Notre Dame – Strong Graphics and Cutting-Edge Design

Image via nd.edu

The University of Notre Dame handily broke out of the college website mold with their new design. Bold images highlight the campus in a visually enticing way that can’t help but draw visitors in. A simple static toolbar at the top makes navigation easy from anywhere on the page. The responsive design looks just as striking on mobile phones as it does on a standard desktop.

Starbucks – Meeting Mobile Needs

Image via Starbucks.com

Not surprisingly, Starbucks found that a growing number of visitors were accessing the site on mobile devices. In answer to the clear need for a better mobile site, they moved to a responsive design that’s equally functional across platforms. The images are simple and deliciously enticing while the functionality is everything users need, allowing visitors to find a store or check gift card balances right on their phones.

Web design is a continuously evolving field and innovation is essential for any business to stay at the top. Browsing these beautiful sites will give you plenty of inspiration for enhancing your own page design.

Author Bio:

DJ Miller is a graduate student at the University of Tampa. He is an avid gadget geek who spends most his time writing on anything tech related. His specialty is Web design and optimizing sites for mobile devices and ultrabooks. You can follow him on twitter@MillerHeWrote.

Those who are skeptical about the breadth and depth of mobile migration often dismiss claims about the power of smartphones and the showroom effect at retail. They claim to see only scattered and occasional instances of people using their smartphones as shopping tools in the aisles.

Well, those skeptics will really dislike Google’s latest research release. This morning the search engine issues a massive study of smartphone users and their mobile shopping habits. The study says that 62% of smartphone owners use their device to help them with shopping at least once a month or more, and 17% are hardcore, using mobile for shopping at least once a week. And among those who do use their smartphones to help with shopping, 84% are doing so in the store.

The phenomenon cuts across virtually all product categories and retail situations, and shows that on average these in-store mobile-assisted shoppers are using their device 15 minutes or more per visit. Nevertheless, retailers should not fear the showroom, because the shoppers who are the most frequent users of smartphones say they actually are buying more goods per shopping trip then are standard smartphone shoppers. In fact, in the health and beauty category, the median basket size is 50% larger for the hardcore mobile shopper, and 40% larger in the appliances category.

Not surprisingly, the smartphone may also be changing the relationship between the shopper and in-store service. For instance, in the appliances category, 55% of smartphone shoppers say they have used their device in-store rather than consult a salesperson — and even in the baby care and household care categories, 40% and 39%, respectively, say they have used devices to circumvent the help.

Principal in-store mobile use does shift according to category. While price comparisons were important to only 36% of grocery shoppers and 44% of apparel shoppers, finding the best price was important to 74% who were shopping in the appliances category, 70% in electronics, and even 62% in baby care.

Indeed, there is an important diversity in use cases and functionality according to category. For instance, in the electronics segment, 70% of mobile shoppers are checking price, 51% are just browsing products, 45% are looking for product reviews, 45% are looking for hours, 42% are looking up product information, 42% are finding locations and directions, 40% are hunting for promotional offers, 35% are finding where products are sold, and 32% are checking store availability of products.

Compare this to the use of mobile phones in shopping for household care products — where 58% are looking for price comparisons, 41% for location or directions, 36% are simply browsing on their phones, 34% are looking for promotional offers, and 32% are looking for product information. Clearly, shoppers who are hunting for various segments are in fact also using mobile differently and in different modes that require sometimes vastly different feature sets.

Google is happy to emphasize that 82% of people who are researching products in-store say they are starting with a search engine over other sources, such as store Web sites (62%), brand Web sites (50%), store apps (21%), and deal Web sites (20%). And by a 65% to 35% margin, mobile shoppers in-store say they prefer using mobile sites over apps.

The survey was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2012 among 1507 smartphone owners who use their devices for shopping. To be sure, it is not surprising that a Google-sponsored study tends to find and emphasize the importance of mobile search and mobile Web to the shopping experience. Actually, I am struck by the relatively high share of people who actually are using branded store apps, considering that this indicates some degree of brand awareness and loyalty to begin with. And most retailers of some mobile maturity understand that the audiences and use cases are somewhat different between the mobile Web, which is more about discovery, and branded apps, which will focus on the brand loyalists were drilling very deep in their research.

Nevertheless, there is an interesting divide suggested here between a mobile Web that Google is suggesting to be more of a reflex for shoppers and simply to have a greater power for discovery versus the more closed system represented by the mobile app. And it almost goes without saying that Google is not asking the question about which mobile operating system — Android or iOS — predominates.

And it is also important to emphasize that the overwhelming majority of those defined in this study as “mobile shoppers” have said simply that they have used the smartphone to help with shopping at least once a month. Only 17% are admitting to making a weekly habit of it. What percentage of people you think would say that they search at least once a week on the desktop browser about a product or store? As with any emerging media activity, it is the transition from fascination to ritual and habitual use that really makes the biggest difference

The Google homepage today features a cartoon homage to a range of famous films, including “Spartacus,” “West Side Story,” “Man With the Golden Arm,” and the immortal Hitchcock thriller “Vertigo.” What do all those movies have in common? They all feature the work of the pioneering designer and artist Saul Bass, who did for the opening credit montage what Rodin (another recent Google doodle honoree) did for sculpture.

Mr. Bass was born in 1920 in the Bronx and educated at the Art Students League and Brooklyn College. Initially, he worked as a graphic designer – he established his own firm, Saul Bass Associates, in 1946 – but in 1954, he was contacted by the director Otto Preminger, who wanted Bass to help him design the opening credits for the movie The Man With the Golden Arm.

As the New York Times notes, before Bass arrived on the scene, opening credits were “little more than perfunctory afterthoughts rarely more creative than having the names of the movie’s stars and production staff revealed by the turning pages of the book.” Bass changed all that, creating for The Man With the Golden arm a heavily-stylized (and immediately memorable) opening montage.

A string of high-profile gigs followed. Bass did the wild, hypnotic opening sequence for Vertigo; and the funky, frenetic, LED-inspired lead-in for Ocean’s 11. He was also called upon to provide on-set advice – Bass helped design the final battle scene in Stanley Kubrick‘s epic Spartacus and the terrifying shower scene in Psycho.

By the 1980s, Bass was spending less time in Hollywood and more time in the world of corporate advertising. Among his most prominent clients were Minolta, Quaker Oats, Warner Communications, and AT&T. Interestingly, his design work in this period was just as iconic as his film work – consider his memorable reworking of the old AT&T bell logo.

“The fact of the matter is, I want everything we do – that I do personally, that our office does – to be beautiful,” Bass told an interviewer in 1986. “I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything, or that the client thinks that it’s worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.”

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Bass had something of a late-period revival. He handled, for instance, the opening credits for Goodfellas, The Age of Innocence, and Casino – all movies directed by Martin Scorsese. Indeed, Mr. Scorcese, who penned the forward to a 2011 book on Bass, has remembered being “equally astonished” with each new piece of art that Bass produced.

“Before I ever met Saul Bass, before we worked together, he was a legend in my eyes,” Scorcesewrote. “His designs, for film titles and company logos and record albums and posters, defined an era. In essence, they found and distilled the poetry of the modern, industrialised world. They gave us a series of crystallised images, expressions of who and where we were and of the future ahead of us. They were images you could dream on. They still are.”

Bass, whom the New York Times later hailed as a “minimalist auteur,” died in Los Angeles, in 1996, at the age of 75. Wednesday would have been his 93rd birthday.

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We talk about Generation X, Millennials, and Baby Boomers, but I’m going to invent a new generation: the Spoiled. The Spoiled generation knows no age boundaries; it does not care when you were born. Whether or not you are part of the Spoiled all depends on your answer to a single yes or no question: has real-time media made you feel entitled to having all of your media needs instantly available?

This morning, I realized that I am part of the Spoiled.

It all started when I attempted to Rick Roll my brother at 8:30 in the morning. My sinister plan ready, I opened up YouTube and searched for the Rick Roll video. I clicked it myself to make sure it was the right song – as if the 61 million views didn’t clue me in – and was upset to find a 30-second pre-roll advertisement (which was probably served to me in real-time) before the real deal. How was I suppose to Rick Roll my brother when the ad gave him 30 whole seconds to figure out what was going on!?

Now, that isn’t an example of real-time media in our industry’s typical sense, but it underlines something important, which is that real-time technology has spoiled us. I wanted my video in literal real-time, and was peeved to be delayed by 30 seconds. But members of the Spoiled generation have extended beyond those who want their favorite videos and songs in real-time. They now walk among the advertising world.

Whether or not programmatic buying and selling of inventory is done on private marketplaces or on open exchanges, it will eventually be the way most media is traded. It’s like the old tagline of Pringles: “Once you pop, the fun don’t stop.” We have opened the can of real-time, and the fun won’t stop until it’s everywhere. The industry has discovered an easier and faster way to sell inventory – why wouldn’t it become the standard? The hurdles of RTB will be cleared and the unconvinced will be converted. It’s only a matter of time.

I was able to circumnavigate my quandary this morning by finding a clip without a pre-roll ad to successfully Rick Roll my unsuspecting brother, but the damage had been done. I am now part of the Spoiled. Are you?

At my local vegetable stand, I don’t buy produce based on cheapest price. I pass over the discounted tomatoes, close to the perishable date, packaged in multiples and buy the vine tomatoes that cost more but have the color, flavor and texture I want. I’m here to suggest the same kind of thinking can serve us well when planning and buying T/V (Television/Video), and that there is a new, fresher, higher-value “tomato” in town: CPCV (Cost Per Completed View).

In the history of media buying and selling, Cost-Per-Thousand (CPM) impressions has been a reliable standard for understanding cost/value across traditional media vehicles. Some examples where advertisers have been willing to pay higher CPMs for more valuable inventory are:

• Television / Magazines have commanded CPMs at multiples of Out-of-Home (OOH) / Radio
• Prime-time television has been purchased at multiple CPMs of Daytime
• For many years the reach of broadcast networks earned higher CPMs than comparable cable

Many valuation criteria have been used to justify higher CPMs over the years, including:

• Audience engagement
• Commercial clutter
• Target composition
• Reach potential
• Quality of programming
• Association with programs or events

Most criteria are based on surrogates presumed to indicate qualitative benefits (Do ratings or composition always indicate greater audience engagement or affinity?  Do Emmys really translate to program quality? Do sight, sound and motion really communicate better than a well-placed billboard?)

In television, the advantage in setting pricing has always gone to sellers, due to the control they had on inventory supply and the ever-growing demand from buyers. This imbalance of supply and demand has resulted in advertisers regularly paying CPM increases of 5%, 10% and in some years 20%+ over the previous year.  This in spite of the fact that traditional broadcast, cable and satellite buys have never been able to ensure that an ad purchased based on “opportunity-to-be-exposed” CPM impressions will actually be seen at all, let alone fully seen by the viewer.

Now, the landscape has changed as the creation and distribution of T/V expands into new methods:

• online video, tablets and smartphones that tap into WiFi
• Over-The-Top (OTT) content servers like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime (the latter two are currently commercial-free)
• Internet-connected devices like Smart TVs, Roku, Apple TV boxes and game consoles

As supply of T/V inventory increases beyond the oligarchy of major media companies to the broad frontiers of the streaming Internet, we no longer will have to wonder which half of advertising is wasted.  Simply put, the industry can now demand new formats and choices for how T/V ads can be bought.

One revolutionary new method that indisputably guarantees value superior to any seen before in the linear television marketplace is the Completed View.  With pre-roll and other forms of guaranteed viewability delivered and measured by sophisticated ad-serving platforms that can be verified by third party entities, the advertiser now knows whether a T/V ad has been completely seen, partially seen or not seen – a judgment that is quantitative, not just qualitative.

I hope ad buyers do not get deluded into translating and comparing costs and valuation back to the old, comfortable “opportunity” CPM metric, and conclude that they don’t want to pay “more” on completed views compared to the CPMs of the past. Smart advertisers and agencies should gladly pay a higher effective CPM for the buy based on Cost-Per-Completed View (CPCV), knowing that you cannot compare a ripe new tomato with a bunch of browning, overripe bananas.

The more advertisers and agencies demand premium, viewable, completed views for their T/V ads, the more media providers will be incentivized to incorporate these into their ad sales offerings.  Cable T/V providers have the Set-Top Boxes (STBs) in place to manage CPCV inventory, online publishers are producing video and exploring ways to free the pre-roll from produced video content, and online OTT providers also have the technology to deliver and report on completed views. As the use of big data media exchanges and programmatic buying expands, CPCV measurement will be more available and a standard analytical tool.

So do not be deterred, advertisers and agencies, from stepping up and paying a fair price for guaranteed viewing, leaving the “tasteless, mealy tomatoes” of traditional “opportunity-to-expose” impressions to those who can only see CPMs, while feasting on the delicious new taste of full accountability in ad-placement tactics.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images file

In 2010, Jane Henson donated 10 characters from “Sam and Friends” to the Smithsonian.

LOS ANGELES – Jane Nebel Henson, the former wife of Muppets creator Jim Henson who was influential in the creation of the popular U.S. TV puppet program, died on Tuesday following a long bout with cancer, The Jim Henson Company said. She was 78 years old.

Henson, who died at her home in Connecticut, was an “integral creative and business partner” in the Muppets, the company, owned by the Hensons’ five children, said in a statement.

Jane Henson, born in Queens, New York, in 1934, was an early puppeteer, as well as puppet designer for the Muppets, best known for characters Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, who starred in numerous television programs and films.

She first met Jim Henson in puppetry class at the University of Maryland in the mid-1950s and the two went on to create together the five-minute television program “Sam and Friends,” a precursor to the Muppets.

The show served as a lead-in to “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” news show and “The Tonight Show Starring Steve Allen” on a Washington, D.C., NBC affiliate.

Although Henson stopped working as a puppeteer to raise her children in the early 1960s, she was still responsible for recruiting top talent and performing on occasion on the children’s show “Sesame Street.”

Henson legally separated from her husband in 1986 prior to his death. She later founded The Jim Henson Legacy to promote his work. She is survived by her five children.

Jim Henson died in 1990 of organ failure following a bacterial infection at age 53.