“CafeSonique.com is a Flash-based internetsolution that delivers voice, music, video, B2B chat, messaging, and 3D virtual room and building creation services”. While this still is pretty vague to me, the website is awesome.

It takes a while to load the animations, and the navigation through the buildings may feel a bit slowish, but check out the website. A grid with 3D buildings, animations and solid graphics make this website an award winner.

Agencynet.com is a design agency based in the USA, with a location in New York, and one in Fort Lauderdale.

Their website is pretty original! They created their website based on a company floorplan, each room represents another part of the website. Combined with a clean layout overall, and the clear navigation it makes an excellent website.

PenguinPages.co.uk is a free online directory filled with UK based businesses and companies.

The website is fairly simple, and the focus is mostly on the search form and the large mascot, called Joey B.  They chose to use a carbon looking background, and bright colors of orange to make it all stand out. The mix of serious content with a playful theme worked out pretty well!

K4Lab.info is the website of Maciej Rakowski, a graphic artist from Poland. The website welcomes you with the splash page shown above, and turns into the personal portfolio of Maciej.

The site is set up with vibrant colors, and shows parts of nature combinedwith graffiti like artwork. Overall a vey original style, and a look at his portfolio will not disappoint you.

“Subernova is a web based project management tool to help solo designers, writers, bloggers”. Not much else I can add to that, but it’s mainly the layout of the product which I want to show you.

Subernova is created by Hex.sg, and is using black and white troughout the entire product, with blue as an accent color, used to highlight selected items or options. Creating a strong design with only black, white and blue is pretty impressive!

Since we discuss artwork on this website, ShinyBinary.com is certainly welcome here. It is the portfolio overview of Nik Ainley, an illustrator from the UK.

While it is not really a website, it does feature some great works. A perfect example of great graphics and talent!

For all Adobe Illustrator users here: Vectips.com is for you! The website is dedicated to Illustrator tips, tricks and tutorials and created by Ryan Putnam (a.k.a. Rype). Ryan also runs Rypearts.com, his personal website, including his portfolio.

Back to Vectips. The site has a clean look, and crates a fresh impression. The main menu items are located on the top left, accompanied with big icons to make it easy to spot and navigate. The posts are setup with a lot of space between them, and make it feel light and easy to read. Certainly worth a visit if you are a designer.

Coda.co.za is the personal website of Damien du Toit, an internet professional and photography enthusaist from Capetown, South Africa. He shows his work there in the form of photographs, web development, graphic design and GUI design to name a few.

His website looks pretty basic, but the typography of his logo, and the diagonal navigation at the top make it stand out from the crowd. Small details in a website can really make it or break it.

The Dierenbescherming (Dutch for Animal Protection) has just launched a new website. The organisation consists of several ‘action groups’, with each their own responsibility. To name a few, there are inspection services, Ikzoekbaas (a shelter organisation to provide animals with a new home), Kids for Animals to provide information in a very accessible way for children.

While all the linked websites are in Dutch and have their own web address, it is very clear how they are combined on the homepage of the animal protection website itself. The website is divided into several blocks, where each group is represented.

Furthermore the choice of colors is excellent, soft tones to make it clear and easy to navigate, and brighter colors to highlight several actions or the more important parts of a page.

365daysofastronomy.org is a website with at least one new podcast a day. While astronomy certainly is not one of my hobbies, the design did make me read the website more thoroughly.

A few nice abstract lines on the background with some glow effects applied make the website stand out. The combination with the cutout logo makes it look special, simple but effective.