I'm thinking of going with a totally different style.. inspired by http://www.alfredapp.com/
Big type, top-to-bottom, full screen.
What are some of your favorite web application user-interfaces + designs?
But then I realized that it's an amazing solution to the problem they're trying to solve; discovering new music.
You're shown just one song (you've likely never heard of before) at a time.
You either like it and listen to it, or move on to the next.
You can't physically listen to more than one song at once, so you move everything to individual pages.
TheSixtyOne's design can be improved a bit, sure, but the overall concept is brilliant.
<plug> http://www.HobsonFiles.com </plug>
So did http://mailchimp.com. I've always been impressed by how much personality their web app has while actually doing something very useful.
Isn't that a bit wide of a design? I would think that the average person would have to scroll left and right to see it all. I did, at least, and it took me by surprise.
Edit: In reference to the landing page.
Here is a list of YC funded companies (look on bottom left column under investments) - http://www.crunchbase.com/company/y-combinator
I always start at PatternTap.com when I'm stumped on a design solution.
Text.
Just text.
At worst, it would have taken a PNG to produce the same thing, but they decided to create an entire Flash app devoted to displaying some text.
Typekit, Fontdeck, etc. are helping to fix this problem, but it takes time.
e.g., Instead of: <td id="flash_banner"> </td>
they should do this: <td id="flash_banner">project: The Total Library</td> (They use JavaScript to replace that <td> element with the Flash banner)
The first thing that hits you is a sliding list of benefits + social proof on each slide + prominent buttons for a free trial and a video tour.
Take the 10+ billion web pages out there, zoom in on the top 100 by traffic, which one is effectively used by the maximum number of people for non-trivial tasks?
Craigslist is at or among the very top of the list. I don't count Google, which is meta—they are a "portal" of the web. I discount Facebook for the same reason, as well as being 99.999% used for trivial tasks(teenagers sharing stupid photos, etc).
Think of web users as a strictly economical force, and ask which web site has the most real-world impact? Craigslist is 99% about real-world money changing hands. Buyer, meet Seller. Google, Facebook, the Silicon Valley Bubble Chamber, and almost all the biggest web properties/brands on the web are derivative products. Their value is based on the value of something else, or the value of a collection of something else.
I often wish Craiglist would add a simple counter to their site displaying a total value of good exchanged, similar to what many new sites show. Even if only a fraction of commercial exchanges could be tracked through some half-hacked manner, I bet that dollar amount would be a very large and surprising number.
Craigslist loses all design awards. This is true. It is an eternal relic enshrining HTML web design circa 1999, it has a hideous, redundant UI, it mercilessly makes users do too much work to sift and sort through what's out there, and provides no tools to lessen at least some of the work. And there's no way to extend or scale it it beyond doing individual, in-person transactions. Yet Craigslist blithely meanders on its merry way in 2010 without needing to partner or integrate with any other major web properties, any "Tech Coast" corps, any telecoms, nor are they beholden to Wall St in any way.
Name one other site that defeats this same set of constraints?
As for how this relates to design proper, the best designs are those you don't even see, and which optimize some set of material constraints that you don't even know about.