1. Jon Hicks

Jon Hicks from Hicksdesign is the man behind many well-known logo designs like MailChimp, Shopify or Silverback. But Hicksdesign is responsible not only for great logos, but also great user interfaces and web designs for Mozilla, Opera Software and others.

Follow Jon Hicks on Twitter: Hicksdesign

2. Cameron Moll

I think Cameron Moll was one of the first designers that I admired when I started searching the web for inspiration. From well defined typography to great colors, Cameron’s designs are absolutely stunning. You can check Authentic Jobs or one of his great typographic posters to see Cameron’s style and execution.

Follow Cameron Moll on Twitter: Cameron Moll

3. Jason Santa Maria

Please tell me that you have heard about Alistapart.com, Typekit or maybe WordPress, otherwise I will find you and you will feel the wrath of the pixel. Jason Santa Maria is one of those designers that you read about constantly when important stuff is debated. Also, take a look at his portfolio, you will be amazed about his artwork.

Follow Jason Santa Maria on Twitter: Jason Santa Maria

4. Veerle Pieters

Veerle Pieters seems to be the only woman in this list … that’s strange, because there are a lot of good women designers out there. But back to Veerle and her graphic design skills – any pixel she puts on the screen is mind-blowing and any of her portfolio samples are unique.

Follow Veerle Pieters on Twitter: Veerle Pieters

5. Matthew Smith

You may know little about Matthew Smith but I’m sure that you already are a fan of his work. You have to be … because his big blue whale is on every design gallery site – yes, I’m talking about the Squared Eye whale.

Follow Matthew Smith on Twitter: Matthew Smith

6. Elliot Jay Stocks

You may read Elliot’s description in the next image, but you have to visit site (great design and execution) and then visit his portfolio. I promise you won’t be disappointed. He is a complex designer having artworks in all design domains: print, web, identity, illustration.

Follow Elliot Jay Stocks on Twitter: Elliot Jay Stocks

7. Simon Collison

You might have heard about Responsive Design, the new hot thing in web design – adaptive design based on screen size and more. Well in case you have, you are familiar with the mother of all responsive websites – http://colly.com – Mr. Simon Collison’s website. I actually don’t want to say more and invite you to visit and discover it.

Follow Simon Collison on Twitter: Simon Collison

8. Dan Cederholm

Dan runs the small yet awesome design studio – SimpleBits, studio that brought great designs like Cork’d, Wikirank, Sphere, MTV, Odeo and even Google (2 tiny icons). What you probably are more familiar is Dan’s latest book – CSS3 for Web Designers (buy it, it is a great source for CSS3 techniques).

Follow Dan Cederholm on Twitter: Dan Cederholm

BlackBerry

Apart from the fact that BlackBerry’s slider content is outstanding and very creative, it also takes the main part of the site making the slider the most important part on the homepage.

Palm

Palm takes the slider component and uses it in a slightly different manner. Instead of being the main focus on the front page, Palm has a smaller vertical slider that is more subtle than the one from BlackBerry.

HTC

You can see a big resemblance between HTC and BlackBerry. HTC uses the slider as the main component on the same page though the style is more clean and with a sketchy touch.

HP

HP takes the content slider a little bit further compared to previous sliders. Apart from the usual navigation, HP adds a play, previous and next buttons and makes the slider static in the first place.

Lenovo

Lenovo is another company that has a big slider on the first page as well. Actually almost all big players from the PC domain have and on Lenovo’s site you can see a simple one with a simple numbers based navigation.

Acer

Compared to Lenovo, Acer has its main page deigned as a big slider with thumbnails position in the bottom right side for navigation. From this selection of sliders it is the one with the strongest presence.

Microsoft

We can’t have this showcase without mentioning Microsoft. On its first page Microsoft has a slider like a horizontal accordion. It is a different approach compared with the rest sliders, it shows the content clearly and I assume it drives good conversion since it is on Microsoft website for quite some time.

IBM

I actually can’t remember IBM’s site without a slider. I think that is because IBM had few updates on the design and that a slider was involved in one way or another. Anyway, the slider looks great because it always has great images and a simple fade+slide in effect for text.

Oracle

What ca we say about Oracle’s slider. Not much actually … it is simple, powered by great images and it has a simple navigation placed in the top right side.

SAP

SAP, Oracle’s biggest competitor has a slider too. The difference is that the navigation is based on thumbnails, in this case faces of important people.

Nvidia

Nvidia relies heavily on the slider to notice the user about latest events and products. Its slides are often small videos that enhance the importance of the slider.

ATI

AMD/ATI has a different opinion on how to use a slider. On their site, you can find 2 smaller sliders – one to promote technologies and another to showcase products.

Intel

Now that we’ve covered AMD, we must cover Intel. And Intel has a slider too, but bigger (no wonder), with blue based images in order to emphasize Intel brand.

AOL

A different segment where content sliders are often used is the segment of portals. And AOL is one of the top portals with a small slider in the center of the page that showcases the most important news.

MSN

MSN falls in the same category as AOL and it has a slider with the same functionality as AOL. But you will notice that MSN has a much more cleaner approach.

NewEgg

The last 2 examples are from e-commerce sites. The first one is NewEgg a great site for electronics that uses the slider component at a lower scale compared to early showcased sites. The main purpose of the slider is to present the latest promotions.

Target

The last item on our list is Target.com. Compared to NewEgg, its slider has a different approach, covering a lot of space but promoting general stuff rather than specific.

As you can see, slider components are widely spread and also are becoming popular. From blogs to corporate websites we find these components scattered across the web. Let us know what you think about this component or other great samples of sliders.

Cheers!

Kyan

“We are a creative web design & development agency with a passion for web standards” – Kyan Media

I really think that this site has it all, from the visual side to the performance side, KyanMedia.com is one great design inspiration.

It has a simple yet good navigation, interesting colors and a pleasant way to display content. Also, another thing that you can benefit from this site is the portfolio. In this section you will find a lot of great samples for inspiration.

Simple and effective. Different sections of the website are sustained not only by creative 3d animations but also from graphic elements and strong colors. Another thing that I like is how the information is structured and displayed. You will not see tons of details on this site, instead you will see dedicated sections and lot of space – which is a good thing.

Conclusion. Overall, I’m very impressed by this site and I really recommend it as an inspiration source for dynamic websites. Even the 3d animators can learn some tricks from this site. All they have to do is check some of the 3d animations.

2010 Ford Fusion and Fusion Hybrid

Technology: Adobe Flash
Characteristics: Dynamic, Clean, Great User Experience, Perspective