Here's an interesting look at CSS design. Found it through urlgreyhot's post about his submission acceptance to Zen Garden, a CSS design challenge for web designers.

From Zen Garden:

The Zen Garden aims to excite, inspire, and encourage participation. To begin, view some of the existing designs in the list. Clicking on any one will load the style sheet into this very page. The code remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external .css file. Yes, really.

Zen Garden goes on to challenge web designers to download the main page and the accompanying CSS file, and, without modifing the HTML, create a new style sheet which demonstrates the creative range of CSS. There are a number of submissions already, each an impressive design skin for the Zen Garden home page. Here are a few:

• urlgreyhot's Boddhidarma
• Salmon Cream Cheese
• meliorism
• Coastal Breeze

However, one of the most interesting to me is Douglas Bowman's Golden Mean, not only because of the design itself, but what Bowman has added by explaining his creation process for building Golden Mean. As a writing teacher, I'm always intrigued by the writing process and what it offers learners. With the meta reflection that Bowman includes, seems that Zen Garden would be very useful for teaching CSS by helping students not only see various designs, but also a glimpse into the design process.

Note: Bowman designed the current Wired website theme (among other well known web designs).