There seems to be an explosion of gallery sites, specifically sites geared to highlighting great work with web-standards. The mother of all these sites, in my mind, would be CSS Zen Garden; this site more than any other has showcased what good design can do when coupled with web standards.

Web Creme
CSS Mania
CSS Remix
CSSTux
Style Gala

Now I am all for promoting good work, but with the sheer number of these sites, the amount of duplication of efforts has begun to show itself. Some offer rankings, while others are just blind links to the site with nothing more than a screenshot of the site. There are, however, a couple of sites that stand out and provide more than a simple gallery of the latest and greatest. CSS Globe is hoping to add more to the conversation, as is CSS Beauty.

I think many of these sites will either have to begin offering more to their visitors, or they will lose their relevance to the design community. Providing examples of well-designed sites with no discussion on why they may be good or relevant is incomplete. As a design community, there must be a place to discuss the merits of good design and the cause + effect relationship it may have had on the project(s).

It is like grade school, where we were admonished to show our work, so we may gain some credit even if the final answer was wrong. Design is a speculative business and what I consider a fine design may not be universally held. Discussion of defined merits of a design and how it may or may not succeed in the marketplace is invaluable as we move the design community forward in the ether that is web 2.0.

Tags: website, design, programming