Attitude Design Journal
Online graphic design thoughts and latest news

Recently I came across these “25 Sites We Can’t Live Without” from Time.

The selected sites are:

• 1. Amazon
• 2. BBC
• 3. City Searches
• 4. Craigs List
• 5. Delicious
• 6. Digg
• 7. Ebay
• 8. ESPN
• 9 Facebook
• 10. Fact Check
• 11. Flickr
• 12. Google
• 13. How Stuff Works
• 14. Internet Movie Database
• 15. You Tube
• 16. Kayak
• 17. National Geographic
• 18. Net Flix
• 19. Technorati
• 20. TMZ
• 21. USA Government
• 22. Television Without Pity
• 23. Web MD
• 24. Wikipedia
• 25. Yahoo

I feel this is a pretty comprehensive list. I will be honest and say that some of the sites I was not aware of (maybe because I’m in the UK and some are USA based – eg. The USA government website!), but most of the big ones I uses on a day by day basis are there.

There are a couple of sites which I had heard of but I don’t really go to on a regular basis. That may change now I’m more aware of them. For example the “National Geographic” site looks very interesting and the “How Stuff Works” website might be worth a glance form time to time.

One website they did miss off was (Tongue in cheek) Fadtastic which I go to on a daily basis. Anybody got any other suggestions?!!!

It is interesting that most of these sites are service providers and most of them do not make direct money from the user. One thing they all have in common is that they have quality content. On some I feel that this content drives the design a little two much (eg. Craigs List) and a few of them could do with a face lift. The BBC has been doing this recently to their site which is constantly evolving. The complexity of the information is and has been simplified, along with the introduction of more space and more design elements. I think that this balance is essential for a successful website and to keep these in that top 25 list. Too much emphasis on content with the neglect of design, typography and aesthetics is fatal.

Anyway I thought that these 25 were a good resource to write a post about and if you would like to add a comment please feel free…

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 12:56 pm and is filed under General Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.