In April we have written that Smashing Magazine has been nominated for the Most Valuable Design Website in the Webinale Awards 2008, the award of an international Web conference Webinale which took place in Karlsruhe, Germany on May 26 - 28. The competition awards most useful and innovative sites related to design and technology. We believed that together with thousands of further smashing readers you can make a difference. And indeed, you made the difference.

Good news for you and for us, folks: we have won the Webinale Awards 2008. We have competed against the prominent CSSBeauty and AListApart, but your support was literally overwhelming. As the prize we have won 5.000 € which we would like to invest in the Smashing Magazine to be able to publish more useful, creative and inspirational articles and release more free high-quality icons, fonts and Wordpress themes.

For those of you who weren’t able to attend the conference: on May 26-28 Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, was in Karlsruhe attending the event. He has also given a talk about “Designtrends 2008: What’s Next?” (.pdf, 10 Mb) in which he covers current trends in web development and examples of modern web design. You can download the slides here (10.4MB, PDF).

We express sincere gratitude to each and every one of you out there, in the wild designer’s landscape across the globe — for voting for us and supporting us in the competition. Without you, we definitely would not win the award. Your support means a lot for us, we appreciate it and we are going to pay you back. Thank you!

So how do we spend the money now?

Well, it is your decision. Since we wouldn’t be able to win without your support, the money is ours as well as yours which is why we would like you to decide how it will be spent.

Do you have any further ideas? Let us know in the comments!