15 of the Best CSS Zengarden Designs

June 12, 2007 by · 22 Comments 

The CSS Zengarden is a great project and helped the web standards cause. Today I’m going to be taking a look back over the hundreds of submissions and choose some of my favorites …


Pinups – Emilano Pennisi

css zengarden design


Obsequience – Pierce Gleeson

css zengarden design


ParAvion – Emilano Pennisi

css zengarden design


Invasion of the Body Switchers – Andy Clarke

css zengarden design 1


The Final Ending – Ray Henry

css zengarden design 2


Some Leafs – Michael Tupy

css zengarden design 3


Burnt Offering – Jonny Blair

css zengarden design 4


Austrian’s Dark Side – Rene Grassegger

css zengarden design 5


Revolution! – David Hellsing

css zengarden design 6


Edo and Tokyo – Daisuke Sato

css zengarden design 7


Corporate Zenworks – Derek Hansen

css zengarden design 8


Oceans Apart – Ryan Sims

css zengarden design 9


Start Listening – Liz Lubowitz

css zengarden design 10


This is Cereal – Shaun Inman

css zengarden design 11


si6 – Shaun Inman

css zengarden design 12



Oliver Dale runs Kooc Media, A UK-Based web company which specialises in Web Apps, Online Communities, Wordpress Tutorials & Wordpress Plugins.

Comments

22 Responses to “15 of the Best CSS Zengarden Designs”
  1. paul says:

    No Retro Theater (http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=202/202.css)?

    :(

  2. Michael says:

    Amazing work! I thought it would be hard to top the original selection but these blow them out of the water!

  3. Oli says:

    I went through every design on the site!
    Link us to the ones you like best then ?

  4. Sean says:

    Don’t feed the trolls. It’s OK for different people to like different sites. That’s what makes us…DIFFERENT.

  5. yusu says:

    yzdesigns.com is a good site

  6. Smarmy says:

    @Awesome Job!

    Your wannabe faux elitism is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cool. Awesome job!

  7. Ecclaim says:

    Isn’t the whole point of CSS to allow one to change the presentation layer without regard to the source, whether that is static HTML or HTML that is dynamically generated on the server through some mechanism such as PHP or ASP? Unfortunately the majority of accepted official designs at the CSS Zen Garden fail miserably in this regard because most renditions require all manner of custom images.

    Whether one agrees or disagrees as to the applicability of the individual designs with reference to their usability versus their artistic content, IMO the CSS Zen Garden fails miserably to promote the use of CSS as the layout control method due to the requirement for the number of custom elements.

  8. Christina says:

    I guess it is all a matter of opinion. However, I do agree that there are other designs on that site that are much better than the ones on this post.

  9. Smarmy says:

    @Ecclaim, you couldn’t be more incorrect. Clearly the static HTML of the CSS Zen Garden is easily changed without regard to the source (yes, including those custom images). The images are specified with the valid, standards-based background-image CSS property.

    Come on, Ecclaim. Let’s not make it harder than it is. The only thing that’s failing miserably is your understanding of CSS’s flexibility.

  10. Ecclaim's Dad says:

    Ecclaim’s an idiot.

  11. BillyG says:

    That is the best selection of designs I have ever seen, bar none!

    Time to crawl back under my rock…

  12. Acronyms says:

    Nice and fresh!

  13. Pretty, but how is image replacement and even replacing the textual content of the document with other text in the images a good proof of concept that CSS is a great technology? Most of these don’t scale when you resize the font and don’t allow for other text than the one provided. The idea of the Zen Garden was that CSS is flexible and that CSS can be pretty. Somewhere along the line we lost the first part.

  14. sameer says:

    css zengarden is a very good platform to show one’s CSS skills

    csszengarden rocks!!!

  15. Aristei says:

    Хуйня какая-то!

  16. CatherineL says:

    I love CSS Zen Garden. I’m learning CSS myself and it’s great for inspiration. You’ve picked some great designs here. I like the top one best.

  17. crems0 says:

    great desing
    nice web
    salutes from chile
    bless

  18. Coder says:

    They are very nice sites, good use of css

  19. Hallaserke says:

    Wow! Nice selection… I’ve send my own CSS, but they need one month to publish… You can see a preview here http://www.unaigarmendia.com/zen

  20. suzie says:

    jedes ist klasse…

    grüsse, suzie

  21. mike says:

    I think it is a real pity that you could not showcase some of the good CSS-based designs on ZenGarden. All of the ones you listed, and most of the designs acress the board, are nothing more than a demonstration of nice typography within Photoshop!
    I think it is probably about time someone started a ‘real ZenGarden’.

  22. css web templates says:

    wow!all the css templates are very nice!thanks!