![5 Website Designs That Blew Us Away [MASHABLE AWARDS]](https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/archives/06IayABL1I6m9pfBSCkygo3/hero-image.fill.size_1248x702.v1647019151.jpg)
When we say "web design," we're looking beyond the pretty face of a well-laid-out page, beyond color and typography, beyond trends. What we're after is a truly elegant and functional design, and those things are just the icing on the cake. We specifically looked for sites that stretch the boundaries of our technologies' capabilities in interesting, useful and beautiful ways.
As greater bandwidth, new file formats and new markup specs make it easier, cheaper and faster to deliver high-quality digital images, sound and video, groundbreaking web designers are making visually and aurally intensive sites that change our point-and-click expectations of what the web should look like.
Here are a few of the websites we think showcased excellent design work this year, both in terms of form and function. They range from video and music showcases, to media troves, to high-volume social media apps, but they all have one thing in common: a (in some cases, renewed) focus on digital multimedia content.
1. Best Social Media App Design: The New Twitter
One of the best social web designs we've seen this year was a reimagining of a familiar product. Still, Twitter's redesign was much more than a facelift.
The new Twitter design was based on the Golden Ratio and was clearly built with users in mind. It beautifully incorporates common user actions with current design trends to make a highly enjoyable, useful and easy-on-the-eyes web app.
Most importantly, the new Twitter.com integrates multimedia content into the stream, a feature users have loved in desktop apps and other third party Twitter apps.
Not that popularity is any measure of artistic merit, but the redesign has also been well-accepted by the app's users. We agree with some of our own commenters that Twitter.com is beginning to match its third-party app competitors in terms of design and functionality.
2. Best Media Website Design: Vogue.com
Magazine-like formats on the web are becoming an increasingly popular trend, but Vogue's design was anything but cookie-cutter.
U.S. Vogue didn't have much of a standalone web presence before this year, but publisher Condé Nast pulled out all the stops (and reportedly loosened all the pursestrings) for the magazine's digital side. Vogue.com got its big redesign just in time for New York Fashion Week.
With a little help from design firm Code and Theory, the new Vogue.com is a wonder of digital multimedia, with splashy slideshows and videos, a full-screen feel and all the gloss and glamour a high-fashion magazine should carry in its online presence.
3. Best HTML5 Website Design: TheWildernessDowntown
Social media-savvy band Arcade Fire knocked our socks off earlier this year with a three-way marriage of music, video and HTML5. The group's experimental new video site changed the way we think about a music video.
Highly interactive and highly personal, the site uses the Google Maps API and the all-new HTML5 spec to great effect. By showing users a Google Street View image of their childhood home from a few different angles, in a handful of constantly resizing browser windows, the site truly challenges the viewer's expectations of what the intersection between music and technology should hold.
4. Best Music Website Design: Thesixtyone.com
When it comes to consuming new music, there are "lean forward" experiences and "lean back" experiences. Thesixtyone manages to offer both.
Formerly a convoluted, music-focused social network, this year the Thesixtyone controversially relaunched as a site where musicians of all stripes, especially independent musicians, can interact with fans and peddle their tunes. The "new" Thesixtyone.com scrapped a ton of clutter from its former iteration, paring down the entire site to its most fundamental and beautiful element: The music itself.
The new site offers a full-window music player that gives users as interactive or passive an experience as they desire, and the huge images and solid typography make the page a pleasure to behold.
The site's new features also include mood-based listening, similar to what we've seen from MySpace's new (and quite awesome) Romeo iPad app and Getty Images' MoodStream.
While many users revolted, we have to give Thesixtyone a huge hand for creating such a simple and gorgeous showcase for independent music.
5. Best Design Shop Website Design: Wonderwall
Debuting almost exactly a year ago, this site is the digital representation of Japanese interior design firm Wonderwall. The firm was founded by Masamichi Katayama in 2000 and specializes in commercial interior design for retail stores, building complexes, restaurants and bars. Its website's homepage contains a huge, dynamic grid of thumbnails that allows the user to quickly and easily browse through the firm's interior design work.
The site was designed (in Flash, no less) by Yugo Nakamura, one of Japan's leading web designers. On his own design firm's site, we learn, "The website’s main index is a fluid grid-structure that sensitively reacts to each mouse action, organically changing its form based on the user’s browsing history."
Although the fluid, mouseover navigation is something of a trend and might even be seen as an annoyance when a more practical browsing experience is needed, the layout is perfect for a portfolio. As the user clicks through, the "wall" of images gives way to a gorgeous, large, black-framed series of photographs for each project in the portfolio. For projects that have already been viewed, the "block" in the homepage's wall becomes a solid color instead of a thumbnail image.
Although the wall is the most eye-catching element, the site also allows users to view projects by year, by category and even by location via the Google Maps API.
What Are Your Picks?
Clearly, this is just a smattering of the most interesting web designs we've seen over the past year. We'd love to know more about your finds and faves.
In the comments, let us know what groundbreaking web designs you noticed this year, and tell us why you think they're important.
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