Take a look at some of the features on that page then take a trip to alistapart.com with a checklist:
Mountaintop Corners Sliding Doors etc...
...and I forget where I've seen that background quotes idea before.
What I'm driving at is not that the designer there has ripped anything off, more that you do build a mental or bookmarked scrapbook of ideas. In the digital web site they COULD have been influenced as much by discovering what can be done safely in CSS as much as what looks good.
Design is as much about method as some ethereal gift which is often how it is treated. As Universal Head Peter points out it's often still an agonising process for 'designer people'.
I moved into programming web apps as I'd been designing for over 10 years previously and needed a break from other people's opinions and all the back seat designing that you have to deal with (designer as scribe?!). I'm now getting back into it and what's interesting is all the methodology of creative thinking that I'm needing to get back into.
As an example with regards to those alistapart things cited above I put them in a mental bookmark filed under...that would be good for the upcoming project X. This same process is done in programming where you build a library (mental or digital) of useful stuff.
That said it still takes a certain other thing to get all things looking pretty and ahem... working in CSS (grasping at straws!).
Nick
We're in danger of getting smacked on the keyboard hands by the List Mum, but I'll quickly say:
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