NetDiver has links to some really interesting sites. I spent a couple of hours perusing through several of them last night:

• Maple
• graphix.at
• digitalica
• arkmedia

and I am amazed at how there is a definite aesthetic consistency across these sites. I do not know where these folks reside so can't say it's a regional thing. I wonder if it is a web thing or an age thing? Are the design styles influenced from the past at all or just peers. Is this an outgrowth of the work David Carson was doing in RayGun and other magazine nearly ten years ago when I was in grad school?

I ask that, yet, i know it is very different. The mental memory of these sites feels similar to Carson's work - even though there is a huge time difference, a technology difference and a media difference. Much of the look of these sites is very interesting and the designers seem to be playing with the technology - lots of DHTML and Flash - in exciting and surprisingly usable ways. On the other hand, I think I may be getting old - so much is very difficult to read in the oh so tiny fonts.