I thumbed through the HotWired style guide so much I ended up having to buy a second. If it was possible I also would have worn out the WebMonkey and Jeff Zeldman sites in the same way. I poured over them all for style cues.

I loved the bright look of the "HotWired" style designs. I found them to be really functional on top of just enjoying the aesthetic. You could get a lot of visual mileage out of a little bit of markup even without images. This was a great feature when most people were on shitty dial-up.