Where to Find the Best Web Design

What do you want your website to look like? Here are some great places to start looking: repositories of the best design on the web. Paying for professional web design can be a big investment. In my experience, the more specific you are with your expectations going in, the more time and money you will save in the process. But what if you don't know what you want? Or you can picture it in your mind, but you don't just don't speak Internet-ese?

Awards websites are a great place to start looking for great web design.

What do you want your website to look like? Here are some great places to start looking: repositories of the best design on the web.

Paying for professional web design can be a big investment. In my experience, the more specific you are with your expectations going in, the more time and money you will save in the process. But what if you don’t know what you want? Or you can picture it in your mind, but you don’t just don’t speak Internet-ese?

More often than not, the best way to figure out what you want is simply to look at other websites for inspiration. Here are a few good places to start.

Web Design Awards Sites

  • The Webby Awards: The most established and comprehensive forum for digital creative work
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  • The FWA: No web designer’s week would be complete without a look at the Favourite Website Awards
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  • Smashing Magazine: This online magazine even has a page dedicated to Inspiration

Admittedly, some these designs can be pretty pie-in-the-sky, beyond what most small- to medium-sized businesses need. But it’s a useful exercise nonetheless, if for no other reason than to see what’s possible.

Web Design Firms

Once you come across a site that you love, try to find out who designed it (usually there’s a link somewhere in the footer), and check out the rest of that firm’s portfolio. We draw a lot of inspiration from other agencies ourselves; here are some of my favourites.

  • Metalab: Victoria, B.C.’s own, and the ultimate in interface design
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  • Hello Design: Los Angeles-based branding wizards
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  • Big Spaceship: A brilliantly named (and talented) digital design shop from Brooklyn
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  • Barbarian Group: Also from New York; their slogan says it all

Not only are these firms’ portfolios an excellent reference point, but their own sites are beautifully designed – always a good sign when scoping out creatives.

Your Competition

There’s no shame in eyeing up the competition. There’s no sense in copying them, either, but you can and should take what they do well and do it better. Don’t limit your scope to direct competitors either: many ideas are transferable across industries, especially when it comes to sales and e-commerce.

While the possibilities of web design are endless, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. All good design is inspired by something else, so don’t be afraid to bring other people’s ideas to the table – as well as your own – when planning a new website. After all, you need to start somewhere, even if it’s not where you end up.


“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”
–Andy Warhol