February 2004 Winners
Thursday February 26th, 2004
If this site popped up on your screen you could be forgiven for thinking it was an all Flash affair (or somehow related to a fishmonger). You'd be wrong on both counts. Underneath the crisp visuals and unusual interface of this small advertising company's site it's all div's, p's and li's.
It's definitely a heavy site -- the front page weighs in at around 375kB -- but that's the price you pay for the great detail contained in the textures and images. As a grisly extra, you even get an alternate stylesheet! ("freshness guaranteed")
Reviewed by Cameron Adams :: Comments (5)
Tuesday February 24th, 2004
There are a lot of well designed weblogs out there, so it takes quite a bit to impress us here at the WSA. However Shaun's new design defiantly hit the spot for me when it launched last week. On first inspection, It's essentially a very simple design. However it's the special touches such as faux form widgets that set this site apart. Very smart.
Reviewed by Andy Budd :: Comments (32)
Monday February 23rd, 2004
In a couple of days Ben Saunders will begin an incredible adventure that will take him from Russia to Canada via the North Pole. He intends to make this solo journey on skis and pull a sledge with all his supplies through the biting cold of the Arctic. "No dogs, no kites, no guides, no resupplies." And here I'm complaining about the unusually cold winter in New York!
Damien Du Toit has developed the website that accompanies this adventure. Not only does it conform to web standards and is very stylish using a table-free, "fluid" layout, but also provides Ben himself an opportunity to communicate with the outside world through cutting edge technology.
Congrats to Damien for a great site and best of luck to Ben!
Reviewed by Johan Edlund :: Comments (4)
Friday February 20th, 2004
This site is the perfect blend of XHTML and Flash, creating a visually arresting site with a distinctive style.
Entirely Standards compliant, the site's navigation and textual content is contained within semantic XHTML mark-up -- allowing for accessible, fast loading content. This is supported by subtle Flash in the header and footer, as well as the content items for which the agency have garnered Clio awards, among others. There's even hidden content for erstwhile browsers ;o]
My only gripe: no background-color makes text hard to read while loading. Otherwise, superb.
Reviewed by Cameron Adams :: Comments (5)
Wednesday February 18th, 2004
Simple thinking is a site that grows on you. The design is subtle and understated, yet it's the attention to detail that really sets this site apart. The designers mix html text, images and flash to create an extremely polished look. An equal amount of attention has been paid to the content, which is written and presented with the sites target market in mind. Under the hood, the site is well structured and makes good use of accessibility features like access keys, tab indexes and skip nav links. On the whole, this site is a fine example of a well designed and developed agency site.
Reviewed by Andy Budd :: Comments (4)
Monday February 16th, 2004
Sometimes the least obvious makes the most sense. Big tiling wall paper (of the kind that my grandma liked) for a rock 'n' roll site?
David Hellsing (:monc) has developed this stylish site for an upcoming "indoors rock festival" and manages to keep it both sleek and grungy at the same time. The site also includes a simple, but effective, flash animation on the home page.
Reviewed by Johan Edlund :: Comments (4)
Sunday February 8th, 2004
This award goes to a site that shows CSS design isn't just the preserve of personal sites or big corporations. Designed by the excellent TwoThirty Media, this site can only be described as wildly sophisticated. But then, I'm a sucker for grid based layouts and big, bold use of photography.
Reviewed by Andy Budd :: Comments (21)
Monday February 2nd, 2004
Maybe I'm just deprived of Aqua looking icons on my Windows platform, but I love the clean, glowing interface of this site. Only one small validation issue on the home page.
Update: And now it validates!
Reviewed by Cameron Adams :: Comments (6)
Sunday February 1st, 2004
We were prepared for long debates and plenty of in-fighting over who would take the first WSA Golden Star (site of the month award), but the PGA Championship's beautiful design and high quality production made it an easy and unanimous choice.
More...
Reviewed by Johan Edlund :: Comments (11)