This is actually a tough call for me, because to be honest, the best site designs are the ones where I don't notice the design. The only reason for me to notice a design is when it sucks or draws attention away from what I went to the site FOR. The Content.
I totally agree with death shadow. For a best designed site i will not consider any flash or highly used of image. rather i will like to see small and smart use of graphics , design with css and best presentation of contents.
There are so many good sites out there. You can just do a google search for "cool site of day". My favorite is webdesignerwall.com
There are sites out there that don't really think that content is number 1, the design is much more important (e.g. design portfolios). Plus, I find that if a site is attractive then I am more inclined to go back there and/or tell others about it. I'm sure i'm not the only one who likes the pretty pictures
Check out the following for some nice work... http://www.cssbeauty.com http://www.csscandy.com I also enjoy going through the templates at http://www.css-templates.com for inspiration It's difficult to find GREAT web design. There is a lot of bad and decent work out there, but few sites get me super excited. I also like http://www.conductor.com/
If by inspiration you mean as an example of how NOT to design a website then sure. 100% flash is automatic /FAIL/ at web design, further compounded by the 'light' version being 830 megs and STILL loading further flash when you click on anything, much less the high version being a complete and miserable /FAIL/ at an absurdly fat and bloated 2.5 megs. Gotta love that 30 second page load since their server seems to throttle connects to some slow rate. Seriously, flash sites like that are everything WRONG with web design.... But then I consider anything bigger than 200k with ALL images to be made of /FAIL/ so...
Yep I do agree. This one(or most of flash site) takes too much time for loading. But one should have to agree this one is eye catching.
This list has some excellent designs: http://www.crazyleafdesign.com/blog/top-40-beautiful-and-inspirational-website-designs-of-2008/
Okay, this is some serious Web Design. They have some serious cliens too! http://www.thezoofx.com Note: You should have a descent Web Speed, Dial Up Not Recomended.
Oh yeah, real professional that on my computer it loads as a giant black page with no non-flash fallback or even hints to enable flash (I browse with plugins disabled turning them on case by case) The 'click to enter' link that doesn't even WORK until the stupid flash rubbish loads, real quality there, especially for what should be simply static content. I'm on a 22mbps downstream and frankly if it takes more than a minute to get from the flash screen to the website proper, that's made of fail. AGAIN, a laundry list of how NOT to design a website. Auto-playing noise, splash page, flash for navigation, flash for content, stupid slow animations that get in the way of prompt navigation (triggering the "**** sake just show me the content" reaction), three navigations before you even see anything resembling content, no fallback content or graceful degredation, and since the only markup is a object tag there is nothing for search engines to even see. Very much typical of a website built by someone who has a graphics background and zero development or marketing experience. /FAIL/ even harder at web design. This is an example of a website who's creator needs to be taken round back o' the woodshed with a hickory switch. I feel bad for the clients who got duped into using it out of their ignorance because it's all FLASH. ... and no substance.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and thats no different with web designs. What one may like another may dislike. For example I like the apple.com website, especially when it comes to their store front.
2advanced.com without a doubt, but a lot of people go without flash and look for my simplicity for example my website www.concept7studios.com