22/01/2010 - Blogger.Iconshock
The 100 best web sites of 2009
Be it Minimal, Flash or just HTML… Animations or plain typography. Be it because of their aesthetics, or because of their content. From minimal interfaces to baroque jaw dropping awesomeness, Iconshock has decided to follow up our infamous 100’s lists and begin this year with the ultimate roundup. These are the websites we can’t live without. Enjoy. The best 100 websites of 2009 by Iconshock. Remember, they are listed in no particular order.
1. Comcast Town
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| Ok we begin our countdown with one of the most baroque designs in the list. The site is a whole town similar to “second life” with games, and other activities. Genius way to market brands. You can spend hours in here. |
2.
The Dollar dreadful Family
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| Incredibly detailed, yet simple in its core. The site is just one page with links to short stories in PDF. But when you first see it you imagine it’s more complex. Perfect site. |
3.
Gisele Jaquenod
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| One of my favorite blog designs. Original, and extremely easy t navigate. And the colors just pop out of the screen. |
4.
Surfstation
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| Minimal, elegant. Beautiful. One of the best blog templates out there, and their content is entertaining and inspirational. |
5.
Slabovia TV/ The Potato
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| Incredibly funny and well designed blog. Full of multimedia and hidden content. These are one of those projects you wish to be a part of. |
6. Level 2 design
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| Amazingly inspiring flash website with beautiful graphics and oldies music. |
7.
Media Boom
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| Heavy flash website but worth the visit. Check out at the awesome animations they have. Superb. |
8. Druckbar
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| This site has one of the most usable, original yet simple menus on the list. |
9.
Vignet Extend
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| Don’t know why, but programming blogs usually look terrible. This is just the opposite case. This looks so good it almost makes code inoffensive. To me the best looking programming blog in the net. |
10.
Dave Werner Portfolio
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| A Bit overcrowded, but impressive none the less. The transitions in between links just make you say… WOW! |
11.
Yodabaz
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| From the counter, you know this designer has taste. Simple, contemporary. Magnificent porffolio. |
12.
Cartelle
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| Though it gets a bit difficult to navigate at times, the site is top notch. Elegant, yet funny and vibrant with amazing games, images and animations. |
13.
Working Element
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| Impressive and elegant, makes a superb use of negative space to achieve a pleasant, artistic, minimal feel. One of my personal favorites. |
14. Nvidia Speak Visual
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| The Nvidia website is one of the classiest and well designed websites of all big corporations. It shows a series of video testimonies of how artists and ordinary people benefit from Nvidia graphics. Great, conceptualized site. |
15.
Magnetic North
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| A bit over the top but still genius. The user displays the links by drawing a gesture on the screen, and each gesture has a different link category |
16.
CSS Tinderbox
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| Great info, easy navigation and very original layout. This is awesome! Some people might find the font a bit difficult to read. |
17.
Blanc Foncé
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| The risk in having flash sites, is going crazy with the possibilities and cluttering the site. These guys use a full screen video background, and yet everything is clear and clickable. Beautiful site. |
18.
Sensi Soft
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| Using a time travel concept, they go wild playing with various designing trends. Extremely fun and jaw dropping website, one of the best in the net. |
19.
Hello Monday
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| Extensive use of flash in a simple layout. |
20.
Five cent Stand
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| Wonderful website for a rock band, much better than almost all big label band sites. The design is harmonious with the lyrics and the general mood of the music. Flash doesn’t mean bling bling! designers take note! |
21.
Unouplus LIFE
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| This is the most fantastic way I’ve seen to present a personal movie archive. Beautiful, easy to use and does what its supposed to do. |
22. Discover Magazine
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| You could live on this website. Their blogs have the best science and rarities content in the whole web and their layout is as clear as water. They have numerous blogs on various topics, and their “Bad astronomy” blog always is a sure bet in the top 50 blogs every year. |
23.
Tutorial 9
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| One of the best source for creative resources ever! Their content is always fresh and easy to follow and their freebies section is packed with useful stuff. These guys are one of the pleasant surprises of 2009 |
24.
Multiadaptor
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| The most simple and inspiring way to show a portfolio. Just perfect. |
25.
Maaike Brakenhoff
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| Minimal gorgeous portfolio. makes the works stand out by their own instead of relying on heavy backgrounds. |
26.
Parasol Island
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| This website is sure heavy as hell, but the navigation is easy and the overall experience is pretty impressive. Flashy website. |
27.
Little Box of Ideas
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| This site is kind of a Pandora’s box where you can find just about anything; Interviews, inspiration, tutorials and awesome freebies. |
28.
The White House
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| Outstanding pictures, great navigation and good content. The vulgar art of politics never looked better. Democrat or republican, you have to accept that change is evident. |
29.
Matthias Dittrich
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| Outstanding portfolio, with one of the best flash navigation I’ve seen. |
30.
Smashing Magazine
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| You really get tired of bookmarking these guys posts. They are the ultimate resource for useful information for designers of all fields. Their layout is clean, simple and readable. Anything you say about them has been said before. Hail Smashing magazine! |
31.
Sketchen
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| This site is so simple it’s genius. I think these guys have the most beautiful headers around, and that alone makes their content stand out and look original. Simplicity is the key. |
32.
Guerra Creativa
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| Very easy to navigate, clear outline and eye popping headers. This website serves as a forum where designers from all over the world compete with their talent to win design gigs. Great idea, but I do believe the pay should be higher. |
33.
Section Seven
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| What an amazing and original way of displaying a portfolio! The flash web launches lightning fast and the navigation is very clear. |
34.
Interactive Agency
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| How can minimal be flashy? Well here lays the answer. This website is one of my top five in the list because It’s elegant, usable and effective. What else can you ask for? |
35.
Labuat
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| This upcoming Spanish singer sure knows how to impress an audience. Besides her great looks and mellow voice she manages to launch one of the most beautiful webs of this year. You can paint animations along with her music and then replay them if you want to. |
36.
The cigarette is dead
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| Cigarettes cause more deaths than HIV, murders and suicides combined. This website brings you in a striking manner testimonies, tools and resources to quit the death habit. I‘m a smoker and I will quit from today. Wish me luck! |
37.
Recom
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| Good usability with a not so obvious navigation. The layout is designed to specially bring out the product. Good info, good content. |
38.
Tori’s eye
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| type any key word in a search box and the site will animate origami pigeons with the tweets corresponding your query. Very ingenious use of flash. |
39.
The movie stills collection
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| This is the Ultimate resource in the whole net for movie titles; inside you will find from Griffith to Ang Lee. Designers, filmmakers and film buffs have to bookmark this site right away, because of is extensive and precious collection, its easy navigation and clean design. |
40.
Revolution
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| One of the simplest and most effective layouts out there. Superb use of typography and images, that just pops out of the screen. Clean, simple, contemporary. |
41.
24 Ways
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| Besides having killer content daily, something that not many blogs do, 24 ways has one of the most unusual and outstanding designs I’ve ever seen. The navigation is clear as water, yet unique. They really stand out in a crowd. One of the best design blogs out there, and to me, one of the top five best blog designs this year. |
42.
Shanghai World Financial Center
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| This site has clear navigation, aided by striking animated backgrounds. |
43.
Making Of
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| This is the place to be if you’re looking for behind the scenes, interviews and info. Massive portal of content and very easy to navigate. |
44.
Britain Rocks
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| The site for all things British. Here you will find everything there is to know about brit life style, opportunities to study or work for foreigners, places of interest, concerts…just everything is set in this site, in a surprisingly easy way to access. That is the merit of this website, to present a simple access to tons of information. |
45.
Livemocha
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| I found this website by accident and it is really changing my life. THE perfect online tool to learn or perfect a foreign language. It harnesses the power of internet to unite people from different places of the world to help others and be helped. This system is just impossible to beat by any traditional course. |
46.
Kuler
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| Impressive usability. This site powered by adobe is the perfect aid to any designer’s toolkit, here you can research and choose the perfect color combination for your projects. |
47.
Apple
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| What else can be said about these guys? One of the most perfect sites ever. Period. It has a massive amount of information, yet it’s so simple to navigate … Only site where you can watch movie trailers, drool over impressive gadgets and buy a pro video editing suite at the same time. |
48.
SolarPV TV
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| This site provides everything about solar energy, one of the fastest growing industries of today. Simple navigation with weekly videos featuring news, updates and tech information. The videos are extremely well made and are flashy enough to grasp any kind of visitor, from the casual to the diehard entrepreneur. |
49.
Madsen Cycles
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| I wanted to include them as an example of how online shops should be. The elegant use of typography and the outstanding images they use gives them a trustworthy feel indispensable for any commercial site. |
50.
Jesus Rodriguez Velasco
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| Just awesome blog. Links and search boxes are displayed in an non ordinary way, but still legible and familiar. The only mole in this blog is that it’s content is not regularly updated. Still a very original blog design. |
51.
Volkwagen
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| One of the best shopping carts out there. The design is so clean and elegant, it makes buying a 40k car just too easy. |
52.
Behind the websites
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| Colorful and brilliant layout. They post a weekly illustration of what they think about selected websites. Beautiful blog. |
53.
Seige Audio Companay
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| Gorgeous images laid out in an attractive clean design. Their online shop is very easy to browse. |
54.
Rawlings
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| Baseball’s favorite brand has one of the flashiest and most jaw dropping websites. Good graphics and easy navigation makes it a breeze to buy. |
55.
Kulturebanause
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| This portfolio is an excellent showcase of talent. Colorful images are balanced with elegant typography and superb icons. You can even change the blog’s theme to your preferred season. |
56.
UX Booth
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| This is in my opinion the best usability blog in the world. Excellent, nonstop content is complemented with perfect design. UX with a heart. |
57.
DiMella Schaffer
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| This architect borough really brakes the mold with an unusual layout full of crisp images and pertinent information. One of the best animated menus I’ve seen. |
58.
Erarta
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| This is the perfect way to visualize art in the web. Full screen images, zoom in option and easy to access thumbnails. |
59.
Iso50
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| This a fine example of retro design, with striking colors and an interesting side menu for navigation. Good reference for designers building up their online portfolio. |
60.
Olga Seriojina
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| This artist portfolio is just one of the best online galleries out there. White minimal layout made to be unobtrusive to the images. This girl is very talented, and her website is one of a kind. Excellent example of art branding. |
61.
Ligaretro
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| The site is very well designed, but what really makes them stand out is their highly inspiring content. They showcase and sell retro sport jerseys from all around the world in the most extensive collection in the net. |
62.
Devotchka
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| Gorgeous flash website of the indie rock band author of the soundtrack of Oscar winner movie “little miss sunshine”. The animations and retro design style reminiscent of 30’s Russian constructivism is outstanding. |
63.
ONY
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| This Russian branding company has an outstanding website, winner of many awards around the globe. The site is visually striking, with very good use of huge animated typography menus. |
64.
Veerle’s Blog
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| Veerle Peters is one of the most respected bloggers and designers of the web 2.0 era. Her content stands out because of its freshness and originality, and her blog is a faithful proof of her talent and taste. She manages to stick in one page, ads, content and links without making it look over crowded. |
65.
CSS Zen Garden
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| This is one of the most inspirational websites for designers. This project is intended to show the power and versatility of Cascading Sheet Styles. |
66.
Firma
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| Impressive flash website that changes background periodically. Being a flash site full of effects, the navigation is quite accessible. They are one of the biggest web design agencies in the world. Check out their client list. |
67.
Freeger
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| One of a kind minimal and elegant portfolio. His works are amazing and the website is cleverly designed to bring the most out of them. |
68.
Willians Fernandez
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| This portfolio is one of the only sites that has a navigation guide of it’s own. You have to read their instructions, but once you get accustomed, it’s pretty amazing. |
69.
57th All japan Kendo Championships
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| Extraordinary showcase of oriental design. Despite the site being in Japanese, the navigation is easy to follow. |
70.
Ryan Kaiser
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| At first glance, the layout looks like a real mess… but that’s far from reality. This colourful website is a beautiful example of typography and non traditional-link placement. Just outstanding. |
71.
Carsonified
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| This web site and their “Think Vitamin” blog are one of the most solid, inspiring web projects in the net. The place to look for all things web. Huge headers, vector graphics and excellent use of typography makes this website the manual of slick design and good usability. |
72.
Axiom
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| Breathtaking animations and innovative navigation makes this website stand apart. It’s in Russian by the way. |
73.
BlogSolid
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| Great content about blogging and entrepreneurship with a fresh approach, both thematically and stylistically. The site is divided in areas depending on your level of “blog mastery” so you can easily access info regardless if you are a complete beginner or an experienced blogger. |
74.
Spoon Graphics
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| Her you can find a massive amount of resources for your designing adventures. Tutorials, brushes, icons…just about everything. The blog design itself is inspiring and one of a kind. |
75. Colourpixel
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| The layout and colours are just eye popping. good example of how good can huge images and links combine. I think working with color is a very difficult task, put this site really pulls it off. |
76.
Jason Santa María
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| To me, this is one of the best blogs in the world. He takes the huge task of changing the design depending on the topic he’s dealing with. This is an incredible amount of work and what makes him simply the best. |
77.
Kenda Perez
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| Elegant 3D presentations and simple layout makes this website one of the best model portfolios on the web. But to tell you the truth, I guess I’m a little biased here. Kenda is just to hot to leave her out. |
78.
Graphic Exchange
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| This website is the perfect source for inspiration as it showcases handpicked examples of good design from all over the world. The site itself is an inspiration on it’s own with it’s beautiful typography and clean design. |
79.
The Huffington Post
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| With a wide variety of content, ranging from politics, to sex, the Huffington post serves as the biggest counterweight to conservative information in the world. Although liberal in practice and intentions, their greatest asset is to serve as a discussion forum where every theme is debated in a comedic, witty and relevant matter. Great navigation to allocate such massive amount of content. |
80.
Sketchblog
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| This cleverly designed blog showcases the art of talented artist Rob Sheridan. Great design and outstanding artwork makes it stand out of the crowd. |
81.
Varywell
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| Incredible Flash menu’s and animations full of inspiring content make this software development studio worth your visit. |
82.
M1 - Design
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| Gorgeous menu animations that will leave you amazed. The site does have a little navigation manual, but nothing to be afraid of. This site is perfect. |
83.
Marc Anton Dahmen
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| Innovative menus and good use of flash makes this website a must visit. High loading times though. |
84.
Seymour Powell
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| In just a few clicks (seven to be exact) their use of minimal, effective images leave a everlasting impression on any prospective client that may want to hire them. |
85.
Peter Pearson
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| Very simple navigation and a few links are just about enough to give you the impression this guy is really talented. This site is a good example of how you don’t have to use the whole rainbow color spectrum to create impact. |
86.
Joe Nyaggah
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| Incredibly simple web portfolio. The navigation is well balanced at a side to play with large areas of white space. Beautiful, usable website. |
87.
Sushi & Robots
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| Designer Jina Bolton made this very admirable and original blog where she showcases illustrators and designers of all styles. Great balance between illustration driven content and elegant yet, playful typography. |
88.
Adidas Teamgeist
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| This web site is a real cinematic experience with long videos so amazing you won’t bother watching them over and over again. They have a soccer game as well, that will give you another reason to procrastinate. |
89.
Mauricio Guimaraes
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| In this site, the user has to interact with an animated menu to access the links. Awesome illustration and clever navigation makes this one of the best portfolios around. |
90.
Magnivate
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| The only site I’ve seen where you have to create a character before navigating. The illustrations are wonderful and the music surprisingly is not annoying as it fits perfectly with the site’s mood. |
91.
Tuts+
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| This family of websites is so well designed and has such curatorial values for their tutorials, that it has become the “original” tutorial place in the web. Great content, ranging from Photoshop, to 3D Max to audio recording techniques. |
92.
Agence Second Life
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| Unusual 3D navigation with gorgeous graphics really brings them into attention. |
93.
Wikipedia
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| This is the ultimate source of knowledge of the human race. A document properly curated, open for every one of us to tell our own view of history, science and art. The true memory of human beings. I can write a thousand words and not manage to embrace the importance of Wikipedia. |
94.
Lilia Planet
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| Amazingly original photo portfolio full of animation and hidden goodies. A real joy to visit. |
95.
Abduzeedo
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| One of the best looking design blogs. The navigation is clear, the images just pop out with a colorful header and dark background, but what really makes this website stand out is its inspiring content. |
96.
We choose the Moon
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| This is the epitome of breathtaking awesomeness! In eleven stages, you can follow the same steps (more or less) the Apollo 11 mission undertook to land on the moon. |
97.
General electric – Plug into the Smartgrid
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| Stunning 3D info graphics and augmented reality applications makes this site the most attractive of all environmental related projects in the web. |
98.
Tin Man
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| This site made for the 2007 remake of the wizard of Oz is one of the best movie websites out there. You can spend hours looking at the animated background and it’s tons of details. Think of it as a visual Matrioshka. Just outstanding. |
99.
Iconshock
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| Well, I just had to put us on the list. I have to keep my job you know?…I’m really just kidding. I objectively added Iconshock on the list because we have the biggest Icon stock in the whole web and the quality of our icons is well renown in the industry. |
100.
Google
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| The ultimate synonym for the Web. In less than a decade they have become the biggest technological company in the world and the future is flowing at their tune. |
Leave a Reply
January 5th
wow G, will take forever to check these out but I’ll get right on it!
Thanks for posting.
January 5th
so many sites to see and all of them amazing!
thanks for the links!
January 6th
I can’t believe I had to get down to #79 to finally see a website I’d heard of; wow! At least I’ve heard of 3 of these, though Google was kind of a gimme for everyone. Nice list; way to go.
January 6th
Nice list. However, I think the list is inexhaustible considering so many great sites popping out every now and then.
January 6th
Great list! I think the list is not so inexhaustible, taking into account that it says “2009″ don’t you think?
This is the best list of websites of any blog. Thanks Iconshock!
January 6th
Thanks everybody for your comments! Any favorites?
January 7th
My two favorites in the new to me cat so far G, are, Level 2 and Mauricio Guimaraes, The coolness and unique design draws me right to them….I’ll let you know more when I get through this list, Oh and Iconshock has every right to be here but it should have been farther up the list…I know that website like the back of my hand
January 8th
i got as far as 44 before i had to stop n bookmark for later. So far the only one i heard of was the white house – obviously, n smashing magazine but im wicked excited bout discovery cuz im a science nut. I dont remember it but i love learned about the world around me (unless its rocks – yuck) and tutorial 9 – always helpful n nice to have everything u need in one place. And of course that ur quitting smoking! Congrats! u have all our support behind u, and heres a science fact for u. Once having quit, after 3 years ur chances of a heart attack go back down to the same as if u had never smoked before! So keep us posted on how ur doing n what method works best for u. Dont be afraid of slip ups, just stay determined. We’re rooting for u!
January 11th
@jjay After 3 years! Holy S#$! That’s not fair! I just splipped and took a cigarette. I feel terrible.
January 11th
I do appreciate that this list is about some wow and amazing sites, but I would definitely not call them ‘best’.
At the risk of being slaughtered here, the problem is that my criteria for evaluating a ‘good’ website might be different to yours – I do NOT believe, for example, that a website such as mnatwork.com is a good one. As a conceptual interactive work of art it probably works, but as a website, I am sorry, it sucks. This is one of the best examples of ‘Mystery Meat Navigation’ that I have seen, in other words, it is practically impossible to know a) what the site is about and b) how to find any info inside the site due to the ‘creative’ navigation system.
I appreciate the list for the fact that it is introducing me to some interesting and weird sites out there, but not ‘best websites’ as such!
Christine
January 11th
HI Christine! Yes you’re right. Magnetic North’s website has a poor usability qualification. Never the less, the list is not only about the most “usable” sites. The Web is changing and some of these sites are fine examples of the evolution of interfaces and a shift of the concept of interaction, and Magnetic North does have an original way to display their menu’s, distant from web apps and more reminiscent of an art installation. That’s why I considered it worthy of the list. Thank’s Christine for leaving your thoughts. You have to keep coming by, thoughtful comments like yours are a blogger’s life.
February 1st
Congratulations for your fabulous post. Best than the times List!
February 3rd
These lists are awesome! Thank you very much!
February 3rd
It’s a pleasure to see many Russian sites listed here! We are the best designers in the world! and we have the most beautiful women too! Via Rusia!
February 3rd
I think there are some websites that shouldn’t be in such a list.
February 4th
Amazing list.
February 4th
The Iconshock site is terrible! What the hell is it doing here?
February 12th
This list is better than the times list I agree!
February 23rd
thanks for compiling. great list. great inspiration!
February 24th
@Sanjay Thanks for coming by! I’m glad this list can turn into a valuable resource for many people out there.