Design and Arty Sites

So I've been having a look around at a number of web sites - and I've been trying to figure out which one's I'd classify as arty or design sites, and why.

One of the sites has been the Smirnoff web site. I personally believe that some of the best advertising we see these days on tv and on the internet comes from the alcohol industry. They have thousands of dollars to spend on their advertising campaigns, and of late this has resulted in a lot of the TV Advertisements and web sites receiving awards for some of the best designs and adverts out there.

I love going to these web sites because the majority have been made in Flash, and I love looking at sick Flash sites, and because of the huge amount of money able to be spent in creating these sites - you just know they'll look fantastic.

Back to the Smirnoff site - is it arty or more of a designers site?

I believe this is more of a design site than arty as it is extremely well designed, with fantastic layout, navigation and animation used. The Flash element to the site has been designed to integrate smoothly with each page and the logos, and the overall feel of the site I believe shows excellent design characteristics (especially with the use of colour).

The site does incorporates some artistic elemts to it which can be seen through the use of vector art around the borders for every page, and also in all the drop down menus and other graphical images seen throughout the site.