Galleries of finished sites
Eleven galleries, and above all eleven different levels of standards. Awwwards rewards technical craft and publishes daily, which makes it the richest but also the noisiest. Godly keeps only a few sites a week, which is exactly what makes it the best entry point when you have ten minutes. Land-book is the only one sorted by industry, so the only one you can use directly in front of a client.
- onepagelove.com : One page sites only. Perfect for smaller client budgets.
- httpster.net : A rawer, more typographic selection. A good counterweight to Awwwards.
- minimal.gallery : Minimal sites only. Handy when a client asks for restraint.
- thefwa.com : The most experimental one. WebGL, 3D, big budget brand work.
- cssdesignawards.com : Weighted toward CSS execution rather than art direction.
Patterns and real interfaces
Here you stop looking at whole sites and start looking at pieces: a navigation bar, a footer, a signup flow. This is what you open when solving a specific problem, not when looking for a direction. 60fps.design is the most underrated of the group: every app animation is filmed and sorted by motion type.
- pageflows.com : Full user flows on video: signup, checkout, cancellation.
- fontsinuse.com : A deeply documented archive of type in use, web and print.
How to use these without losing a day
These galleries are a trap if you open them without a goal: you lose an hour and come out convinced everything has already been done. The method that works comes down to one constraint. Before opening anything, write down the question you are trying to answer, something like how does this kind of brand handle its hero, or how do you present three offers without building a table. You stop as soon as you have three answers. Three references are enough to feed a direction, the fourth only delays the moment you start drawing.
