*Edit:  I’ve since decided to remove a couple galleries and add a couple new ones.  As well, I’ve reordered them in order of the most updated on a daily basis.

CSS DSGN

CSS DSGN is a newcomer among my gallery site bookmarks, and so far it seems very promising.  Updated daily, it displays a good amount of sites not easily found on other galleries.  It also has a sizable archive which I still plan to explore.

CSS Mayo

CSS Mayo is my next favorite gallery which is not only updated daily, but usually with a decent amount of new sites.   It also has a feature allowing you to save sites to your lightbox.

Folio Focus

Folio Focus is a newcomer to my daily inspiration, and so far they seem to have updates regularly, if not daily.  I love that it only displays portfolios of those in the creative online biz (ie: web designers, graphic designers,etc.)

The CSS Awards

Probably the most interesting way of displaying and reviewing the finest CSS based websites; The CSS Awards always adds one new website everyday.  Of course for those of us who love a hefty dose of updates, this will only be a tease.  But be sure to check out the Honorable Mention gallery for more frequent updates.

Design Bombs

Designbombs.com is some of my favorite inspirational design sites.  It hasn’t been updated daily in a while, but is updated at least a few times per week.  Plus it displays a fair amount of sites that other galleries have not showcased yet.

CSS Line

CSS Line has quite a large collection of well designed websites, and it utilizes the infinite scroll jquery technique to display its content.  However this makes it quite hard to come back later and continue browsing where you last left off.  Oh, and I love their logo!

There you have my favorite CSS gallery websites.  I encourage daily visits to each site, in depth exploration of archives, and in general a complete overload of designer’s inspiration.  There are countless gallery sites on the web, many of which display a poor selection of sites, or they themselves just look too awful to even give a chance.  Stick with these galleries and you will surely find what you are looking for.

Other galleries worth visiting:

*Note:  Check back for updates to the galleries list, and don’t forget to bookmark this blog post.

Best Web Gallery – Beautiful designs, but has suffered from a lack of daily updates for quite a while now.

Unmatched Style – Offers much more than just a gallery.  Screencasts, news, interviews, and more.

The Design Inspiration – Massive collection of more than just web design.  Logos, artwork, photography, and more.

Designflavr – Another mix of art, design, graphics, photography, print and logo work.

You’ve seen me around, haven’t you?

However, I recently discovered a wonderful replacement for the above; italic Times New Roman!   It is a bit thinner and has sharper curves; looking slick.  The example is set at 26px, and at 24px it was smaller than the above Georgia, so you may want to play around with the sizes to find the best fit.

Times New Roman has a purpose now!

Courier New, which has a typewriter look to it, is not seen quite as often as the other two Serif fonts.  Perhaps it should be, as it makes for nice headings.

Courier New has a unique typewriter look

Let’s have a look at some Sans Serif fonts ( serifs are the little extensions you see at the end of letter strokes, and the word Sans is French, meaning without ).  First off, Verdana has been seen around the web for ages, and I often feel it is over used.  A great substitute is Arial, which looks very much the same, except slightly more narrow.  Perfect for your general content font style, or headings.

Arial’s Dad can beat up Verdana’s Dad

One secret in my typography arsenal is a font called Trebuchet MS.  In particularly, I use this font for menu items.  It looks quite nice at around 16px, text-transform set to uppercase, and bold.  I prefer to use this font only for main menu links, and maybe some headings, but for the main content font I find it to be too unique.

Trebuchet MS makes very clean menu links

There are several other web-safe fonts you can use in your typography; these are just my favorites.  Play around with larger font sizes, bold, italic, and uppercase.  You’ll notice that some font families work better for headings, and some work better for your general content.  Check out this complete list of web-safe fonts.

As you can see, our new business cards are themed to our website.  We are proud to begin passing them out to potential clients, or those with interest in Brave Whale.  This takes us one step closer to our goal of improving the web presence of San Jose businesses.  Perhaps if you are in the Bay Area we’ll pass our card along with you.

One of our goals is to help enhance the user experience on many local business’s sites by creating feature rich, attractive designs.  We want to utilize modern web trends and technologies on as many San Jose bay area websites as we possibly can.  Visitors to those websites; be they small businesses, local brands, or promotional micro sites, deserve to experience an up to date site with an aesthetic design.

We would love to hear from our community in need of a web design overhaul, or a brand new web presence all together.  Shoot us an email, and perhaps we will sit down together and discuss how Brave Whale can improve your online experience.