The Good

Active Theory

The site that I chose to represent as "the good," the pinnacle of web design, that all other websites should strive to achieve, was activetheory.net. I just found this website today. I searched google for "beautiful website reddit," followed one of the links to awwwards.com, and from there sorted by site of the year and picked what I personally found to be the most visually appealing. Active Theory is a small company builds custom designed websites and applications for other companies, so it makes sense that their own website would be a stunner. They have built two websites for Adult Swim, a programming block on a major television network, as well as many others.

I'm honestly not sure how to describe what makes this website so good. It is well beyond my current understanding how they were able to make it as nice as it is. Each page within the site is accompanied with a nice, animated visual that aren't so flashy as to distract from the actual content. The different files within the website are navigable using the scroll wheel as well as via menu and transition fluidly for the most part. The text is concise and easy to read, and there are links to more information if desired. And overall the website is just a pleasure to look at.

As for whether or not I would recommend this website, for anyone looking to hire a company to design their web page, or an application I say most definitely. For the average user I don't really see any need to visit this site, as it doesn't actually provide any value to them other than being visually appealing, and that novelty wears off rather quickly. However, the website does contain links to other websites that Active Theory has designed, some of which the average person might find a use for. I checked the website on my mobile browser, and while it doesn't look quite as nice, the performance seems to be better, as it doesn't seem to freeze occasionally like the desktop site does. One might find this website inspiring if they are passionate about web design.