Mulling over some ideas for website designs and future projects I usually turn straight to my favourite source of inspiration CSS Mania…

You; You are the hardest client to please - well not you personally, but I mean when you decide to create yourself a personal website it has to be absolutely perfect. No exception. This is the key reason I love CSS Mania because it is full of people doing the same thing – pleasing client number 1.

Being a total perfectionist I struggle to say “right, that’s finished” and walk away from a project with a sense of “a job well done”. Through my eyes everything can be improved and it will never be finished; only usable. This creates no end of problems at work as I am terrible with deadlines because I hate to feel that a project is “unfinished” despite the client and management agreeing it is complete – a recent post on Anywired describes my inner boss perfectly!

So, point, that would be that while looking on CSS Mania at the new sites I decided to dive into the gallery then into 2004 to see how things have changed. Many of these sites are dead or 404ed but it’s almost a perfect timeline of “good design” and how things were a few years ago. It does make me feel like my site will be out of date in no time but being the perfectionist I am, I should be able to keep on top of things.

Have a look at CSS Mania’s archive and think that these sites where showcased once.