I was lamenting.. hell I was complaining bitterly to one Jared Christensen today @work that I don't get any love as a designer, because my way of designing is not trendy.

Jared made the offhand remark that I should blog about that, because it would create a crap storm of Croftian proportions, and we all love a good crap storm online don't we?

The fact of the matter is that I am fed up with the designs that are showing up on all these CSS sites. They aren't showing us good design, they are showing us talent with Photoshop, there is a difference. There I said it.

Right, so here it is

I happen to think that my current design is beautiful; it is well laid out, tasteful and uses color well. I am not afraid to say that I think it is a better, more pleasing design than most of the image heavy follies I see on the CSS gallery sites out there.

And this is really the most important bit: Except for the background image, it is designed exclusively with CSS. If you remove the background image, the layout is still wonderful.

And no, I am not blasting you

Insert-name-of-friend-here. I am just fed up with the fact that the site designs that are getting so much notice don't actually push CSS, they push download speeds and png-crushing techniques. Even the Zen Garden we all know and love is image heavy.

Where are all the sites that are pushing CSS to its limits? Where are the Gallery sites that feature sites that really show what CSS can do?

I'll tell you where they are, nowhere. I have had enough.

See this, this is the gauntlet

And this is me throwing it down. I have been threatening to do this for years. Well time to follow through. I am calling out Veloso, Brett, Bolton, Heilemann, Zeldman, Malarkey and Santa Maria.

I am challenging you to a battle of CSS only designs. Not one damn image can be used. Currently Safari has the most advanced support for CSS, so we will target that browser for our designs. I will host everything on a site I set up for this little challenge.

So hear's the deal

No ads, no income generation, just web design that showcases what can be done when designers of your caliber push themselves to make something beautiful.

The challenge will begin January 1, 2009 and end December 31st 2009. We are all busy people's, but I think a year is enough time to crank out something as simple as a non-image based design, don't you?

Zeldman, Clarke and Santa Maria are not within my circle of peers, so if you know them, tell them to read this post and then step up. Let's make 2009 the year Photoshop took a backseat to Textmate.

We need to show the next generation of designers what can be done with the HTML and CSS, not what can be done with Photoshop. I'll be waiting.