The future of web design is in web standards which emphasize the separation of presentation from structure, design from data, style from content.

Zen Garden is a website dedicated to helping develop skill with the use of Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) for layout. There are close to 1000 designs shown using only ONE HTML file.

We are experienced web designers, but meeting the Zen Garden challenge helped move us to a new level of appreciation of the power of CSS.

Here are our Zen Garden inspired designs. They have been modified from what we submitted to avoid using Zen Garden resources but they remain true to the Zen Garden spirit. We had fun designing them. We hope you will enjoy seeing them.

He's Got High Hopes

A picture is worth a thousand words. In this design, the graphic tells a story of its own. When the viewer starts reading the text, he already has a context in mind.

We pay particular attention to how the site looks in various resolutions and on 6 different browsers to ensure a consistent experience for all the viewers.

Orchid Expedition

On a website the use of graphics is complicated by the issue of download time. We try to avoid large graphics and make extensive use of small repeating graphics.

In this design we found just the right balance of file size and visual impact. Visual interest is carried all the way to the bottom.

Glitz Magazine

Sometimes a design needs to be 'pixel perfect' to be effective. Getting the page to appear exactly the same on all six of the commonly used browsers was quite a challenge. We never resort to having to tell the viewer what browser he should use.

Giverny Garden

Look at this design in both Internet explorer and Firefox. You will see two different implementations of the same theme. Sometimes special circumstances call for variations of the experience on different browsers.