I love collecting links to sites that inspire me to push my own design further, and I thought I'd share my favourites to help inspire you too.
This bunch of sites are all graphcally intense, using a lot of pixels to create a rich experience.
Of course, while Saving the Pixel should be a constant discipline when designing web sites, when your goal is to impart a lot of “soft” information, sometimes you need to splash out. The trick is to keep disciplined about removing anything that really doesn't need to be there. And a big splash, while using a lot of detail in a certain area, can still be read by the visitor as a simpler effect or entity.
Think about a beautiful sky with clouds and lots of variation in light and colour. It's intense pixel-wise, but the overall effect washes over you, creating a “sit-back” emotional reaction without requiring a lot of eye work or thinking.
When a rich web site works, the same thing happens. A lot of detail can be presented, but it works in a way that you can take in and enjoy the soft info passively, leaving you free to get the harder info (facts, links, data) without hassle.
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