Sure, some will argue that there are a slew of cons to this approach: loading time, tricky navigation, having too much content in one small space, etc. When you create something so different from the standard design-style that users are comfortable with, will they get confused? What about IE6? (Shudder.) As with anything new and innovative, there will always be concerns or question marks. Our Rich Media Designer and Interactive Guru, Jared Scheel, will be following up this post later from a more practical approach. He’ll explore what one-page sites do to your SEO, how to get around loading issues, and other things in a technical language that will more than likely go over my head a bit. I’m just here to discuss the pretty… cut me a little slack.

Speaking of pretty, we can’t dive too deep into this subject without bragging a little about one of our own projects. When it came time to design an online identity for beer distributor BountyBev, our designer Jason O’Brien (fondly referred to around here as Shamus) took the chance to do something fresh. Their one-page site that we launched in March is generating plenty of online buzz and to further dote on Jason, we’ve opened with it as our first example of great one-page designs listed below. The site perfectly highlights some of the pros to working in this format: innovative design, centralized content, and an enjoyable user experience.

Our latest team member, and new Creative Lead Jason Jones, was quick to chime in with some of his personal experience with one page sites. He’s worked with tons of musicians and artists in refining and shaping their online identities, and he’s found that one page sites are often the way to go. (We’ve included several of his projects in our examples below because — all bias aside — they were awesome enough to make the cut.) Jason reasons that musicians most often need their sites to serve as landing pages — a way for their fans to connect with them and find them in other places like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and iTunes. Combine a great design with the artist’s blog, Twitter feed, music player and social media links and you have everything they need… in one place.

Here are some great examples of one-page sites we’re seeing around the web. Stay tuned for some blog goodness from Jared on how practical (or unpractical!) this approach is.

Gold Awards:

Southwestern Company
Thomas Miller & Partners
Yamaha: All Access 360

Bronze Awards:

ALOC Group
Belmont University: Debate 08
Giving Tree: Give Card Incentives promotion video
Golden Kraut
SHOUTAmerica
Trevecca University
As our team continues to grow in strength, I’m confident that this is just the beginning and there are more awards to come!  Sure, we have to pull late nights sometimes.. but it’s a great feeling being commended (nine times over!) for the work we are doing in the interactive world.   We are working on a TON of really awesome projects right now that I can’t wait to see entered for more Horizons next year.   Here in the creative department, we make it a point to not let projects out of our door until we’ve asked ourselves: “Is this an award-winning design?”   With goals like that, there will hopefully be many more blog posts in the future announcing achievements.

Good job, team.  Give yourselves a pat on the back.  :)