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Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

As a disinterested observer, I can say two things:

1) They're pretty

2) They piss me off

These sites scream style over substance. I can't think of an Alexa top 500 site that uses this kind of design. The only one I frequent would be Grooveshark, and their design is highly functional.

Between facebook, gmail, reddit, HN, and the various blogs and news sites I visit, 98% of my time online is spent on sites that look nothing like these. Even Hipmunk, while very web 2.0, is completely function-focused. These sites seem like they're pretty for the sake of being pretty, and I couldn't for the life of me say what a single one of them actually does.

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What’s wrong with being pretty? Those websites are fine for what they are, portfolios mainly. You are not supposed to use them every day, that’s not what they were designed for. They are not supposed to be Alexa top 500 websites, none of their designers thought they ever would.

A metro station doesn’t look like a Gucci store and that’s just fine and perfectly appropriate.

What I don’t like about this list is that it focuses on Gucci and not on metro stations. You can’t design a metro station like a Gucci store, you can’t design a high-traffic web app like a designer portfolio.

I'm just taking this list as what it is: A list of very well crafted websites that hopefully inspire others for their own work.

And really, what's wrong with style over substance? It's not like a firm needs to have a Reddit/Gmail style of a design.

I, like you, use Facebook, Gmail, and Reddit quite a bit. However, I don't consider their design to be as outstanding as their functionality (which I know we'll disagree with). Thus, I wouldn't say they are my favorite web designs.

If you look at design as being purely aesthetic, then I agree with you. If, however, you approach design as does an architect, that is, to facilitate human interaction with a necessary medium, then these sites suck.

They are a chair that looks really great from a distance, but that you can't sit in. It's pretty and pointless.

I disagree. You're generalizing and not looking at the business purpose of the sites.

If the purpose of your site is to impress potential clients then there's absolutely nothing wrong with: http://www.dawghousedesignstudio.com/

If the purpose of your site is world domination of classified ads then there's absolutely nothing wrong with: http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/

Dawghouse is an exception. I actually quite like that one. However, I don't like it because it's "pretty", I like it because it follows good design fundamentals and includes nice little touches - like js button highlighting on mouseover. It looks well-put together. I'd hire them.

To quote the movie character Mark Zuckerberg: It's clean and simple, no Disneyland.

I think these are mostly "first impressions count" sites, rather than "you come back over and over again" sites, which have different requirements. Sometimes you only have a few seconds to make an impression...

The only people for whom "first impressions count" is a better business model than "you come back over and over again" are web designers. These sites seem to exist only to fill the niche of sites that exist to please web designers. I can't imagine many successful startups employing these people.

Quiet a few of these sites are actually landing pages for Web Design firms. A couple are for portfollio galleries of 3rd parties.

The rest are pretty minimalistic and function focused.

Thanks for the hipmunk & reddit shoutouts. We're definitely from the function > form school of web design. That said, I'd love a bit of polish on the reddit UI (Apple can pull it off, after all). Hipmunk is getting one soon -- function will never be compromised, but a bit of sexy makes it more palatable, faster, to a wider range of people.

"an oversized number pad and graphic call and hangup keys that even a toddler could figure out"

I had some trouble figuring this out.... style over substance indeed.

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