Design Shack — Web Design Gallery, Articles & Community

Roger Burkhard

The private site of web developer Roger Burkhard. This site features beautifully muted and retro colors along with large bold typography for an instantly impressive visual impact. Be sure to stop by the footer to check out the excellently over-sized links and contact form.

Blake Allen Design

This is the online portfolio of web designer Blake Allen. This site design is all about one thing: typography. It is the primary, and nearly the only, design element on the home page. The simple, Helvetica-centric page uses high contrast black and white content and varying font sizes to distinguish content into a clear visual hierarchy.

Enstore

Enstore is a commerce platform that makes it easy to start your own online store. I absolutely love the beautiful and detailed icon design on this site. The color scheme is brilliant as well and really draws your attention to key areas.

Monk Design

The design portfolio of Patrick Monkel. This is a very minimalist display of artwork that is anything but. The simple design of the portfolio page really showcases the complexity of the artwork shown.

Scriptsrc

This site makes it easy to copy and paste the script tag for your favorite JavaScript libraries. The design is super simple and very effective. The black boxes contrast nicely with the white background and the corner element makes sharing just a click away.

Tobias Bjerrome Ahlin

The portfolio site of Tobias Ahlin, a web, print and icon designer. Aside from the beautiful work on display, I love the gray and black color palette and the dynamically reshuffling gallery.

Hardboiled Web Design

A new book from the author of "Five Simple Steps." This site features a nice spotlight effect on a dark wood background. The color choices on the large text are particularly nice.

Mid Summer Jazz 2010

This beautiful site uses a grunge textured background and excellently attractive typography. The navigation takes you to a new section of the same page, divided visually by vivid color changes.

Great Bible Tales

This is the "coming soon" page for a new site for reading Bible stories. The black site really emphasizes the drama of the background image and makes for great contrast on the white to gray text.

Sticker Mule

Sticker Mule sells custom printed stickers, laptop and iPhone skins. It is an inviting, friendly design packed with vivid colour. The beautiful cloud of stickers on the right really grabs your attention. Also, the icons on the bottom of the page are quite detailed and attractive.

AW Industries

Alexander's portfolio takes on a steel and purple hue, featuring a scrolling portfolio slideshow that appears to "hover" over the rest of the page. I also particularly like the contact page, which includes a postcard mockup, a rate card designed in the style of a till receipt, and a timeline showing how most design projects are worked through.

Design Swap

A novel concept, the idea behind Design Swap is that pairs of designers team up to "swap" the design of an aspect of their site. It's an exercise in trust, and - in my opinion - a thoroughly fantastic idea. The design of the site is wonderful, full of attention to detail and well chosen typography. I particularly like the stylised signatures in the footer, and the consistent use of the bold logo. Definitely worth subscribing to, and keeping track of over the coming months.

TweetShare

TweetShare aims to let you have a discussion (including the sharing of files and documents), using Twitter as a platform. An interesting idea! The design of the site takes a slightly more professional tone than many other Twitter services, with a subtle use of gradients and bold buttons. Logical, clear, and simple.

Drink Up Austin

Providing information all the places that serve alcohol in Austin, Drink Up Austin is a colourful, playful design that matches it's purpose well. Certain aspects of the colour scheme feel a little garish at first, but the design feels natural as you navigate around. Contrast is used well to draw your attention to certain elements of the design.

Cobblestone Community Network

Cobblestone is designed to move people deeper into real relationships. The design of the site is slick, professional, and subtle. The use of subtle gradients and drop shadows gives the site depth, and the purpose is made clear straight away. I particularly like the top navigation, which manages to pull off a slight transparency, a simple texture, and some well balanced typography.

Axel Sears

Many Faces of Alan Rickman

There's a lot to love about this carefully crafted website from the talented folks at Paravel. From the delightful illustration, through to the carefully crafted copy, it's a real joy to browse through. Whether or not you're familiar with the work of Alan Rickman, I'd urge you to click through to find out how wonderful a small, personal project can be. I'm thoroughly looking forward to the other names waiting to be added to this lineup of small promotional sites!

Vartro

Meet Spread for iPod

I Am Docto-Victor Toyens