Cork’d

Cork’d is a web application for wine afficionados. Users build add to the global wine database, create lists of their reserves, their favorites and their buddies. It’s a classic web 2.0 collaborative social web site by Dan Benjamin (of HiveLogic and A List Apart) and Dan Cederholm (of SimpleBits). The colors evoke a bottle of red, and the simple decorations, like the filigrees used a separators provide a dash of style. The colors and graphics are flat and simple (it’s the web! 2.0! get it?) and give a fun and inviting feel to it. The lists are simple and elegant and use very subtle color gradations to convey form and function. The subtle2 gradients are typical of Cederholm’s designs. There’s also a lot of white-space on this page, which makes it feel so uncrowded even though it contains 4 separate areas (sign up, now playing, lists and sidebar), 6 lists and 4 forms (sign up, search and log in).