Sure, some of them are not so user friendly by hey…if they look good, they are good. One type of web design which recently caught my attention is the one which displays a full video on the background. This means that you are not longer greeted with a boring pseudo-wallpaper; now you can see the website in another perspective because a video clip can enhance your feelings and emotions.

If you haven’t seen any website with a video background, then you should definitively check out the showcase below.

Into The Arctic

Art Copy Code

The Art of Raw

Dromoland

Life of Pi

RCZ

Tweet Flight

Find Your Way to Oz

Engage Interactive

Iuqo

Magic City

Cacharel

My Provence

Clouds over Cuba

The Boom and The Arty

Who We Are

Media Boom

Spotify

Windward App

Matter

Even if we can see some extremely interesting flat design examples in the wild, all it matters is the usability. Don’t take this design style into extreme because its minimal look can do more harm than good. Make sure that you have a good level of usability and keep your user focused on the main purpose your application. Remember that the greatest design is not the one that “scream” in the viewer’s eye but rather the one which works from the shadow. This means that every graphic element must work in a perfect harmony in order to support the functionality and to create the perfect environment for the user.

So, if you are interested in the flat design trend and you want to start playing with this concept, you need to begin by searching for graphic elements. Below you can see a collection of 20 flat icon sets which will help you create a fluent visual navigation. Also, these work perfect with some gorgeous flat design UI packs so go ahead to start creating your newest design.

44 Free Flat Icons

Premium Flat Social Icon Set

Flat icons for web cartography

GeoBats

Flat Design Icons Set

Meteocons

ikonic: 180 real iOS icons

Eldorado mini free

Iconic

Flat meteo icons

Foundation icons

Adobe CS6 Custom Flat Icons

Sosa

Rondo

Publicons

20 Flat Icons (PSD)

Glyphicons

Eco Ico

Metricons

Fontelico

If you are a graphic designer then in order to complete your job you need someone with programming skills, so what options do you have? Well, as we all know, the process of creating a web layout is made usually in Adobe Photoshop. After the design is ready, you take the .psd file, slice it and transform it into a fully functional website. So, back to our question: what can a graphic designer do? He can either hire a web developer or using one of the many companies which are converting .psd files to HTML. In my opinion, if you don’t have a large budget or on a deadline you should probably go with the second option.

If you are looking for the best psd to html services, you will find thesiteslinger.com, a company founded in 2009 by Connor Hood. The Site Slinger turns your design into code, so you can sit back and relax while someone else is taking care of all the coding stuff.

The company is based in Texas, so if you live in USA than you can easily talk with the guys and set up all the details via phone, if you don’t like writing emails. They have a flat pricing per page and among other things I believe they are the only team who can deliver all basic jQuery animations, while their competition can’t.

I worked with them and I really loved their fast delivery. To be more exact they can send you the final result in 5 days, 3 days and even Next-delivery.

Ordering is extremely easy: you upload your design then a professional web developer will review your files and completes a development brief to make sure all your requirements are documented before starting the task.

After this step, they will start working on your project while keeping the communication channels open with you. You can instantly talk with a developer via comments, chat or phone so you can easily let them know if you have questions before jumping into the code.

As for the payment, they accept all credit cards so you don’t have to worry about this. They price on a per page basis, with different options for PSD to HTML, PSD to Responsive, and PSD to WordPress. Also, when the coding is done, all of your order history is backed up for you. You are able to find old markup as long as you are a customer. Their code is clean, organized and well commented so you don’t have to worry about not understanding the development stuff. Furthermore, they are using only the latest web standards such as HTML 5 boilerplate, and Twitter Bootstrap so they can deliver for example top notch responsive websites or WordPress themes.

So, if you are looking for someone who can code your .psd files into fully functional HTML and you can’t afford to spend your time monitoring every coding process and also allocating a big budget, then I recommend you to try thesiteslinger.com for PSD to HTML.

You don’t have to trust me; you just need to take a look at the following examples of their work.

PanoramicPanoramic.com

Onespot.com

Capital Factory

The author of the following photos is Joanna Kustra, born in south-eastern Poland in February, 1984. Her artistic skills developed quite early, since childhood she has been fascinated with music playing the piano and oboe. Her adventure with photography began at the age of 22 and in a short time from a hobby developed into a true passion and a way of living. She is a self-taught photographer, from the very beginning fascinated with people, portraits and fashion photography.

Now lives and works both in London & Krakow.

In this article you can see a collection of 30 crazy designed business cards which will definitely capture your attention.

Michael Barley

Mystique

Boardinker

Pastelz

Dogghouse productions

Drew Wise

Calling Cube

Powell Peralta

Angela Dini

Yeti Frozen Custard

Pilar Celda

Scratch Design

Foxtrot Media

Imagine

Baywood Clinic

Uth Oye

Tribe

Grammar Checker

S.O Tinn

Ryan Len

Elias Widemann

Tian Lan Photography

RooService

Plumber

Alex Timokhovsky

Hoccus Poccus

Shakes

Kinky Curly

Rochelle Pastry

Ryan Johnstone Electrical

For those who love the radiance and freshness of Vietnam and its landscapes, the work of Phan Thu Trang is definitely a welcome choice.Trang’s naïve, decorative works are unmistakably Vietnamese in character. Taking the landscape as her subject, Trang simplifies individual elements to their bare essentials. With a limited palette, the artist prefers the use of texture to define her subjects. Smooth areas of bright monotone paint together with the lush, painterly impasto used to define tree leaves.

Vibrant, bulky vault of trees dominate spindly trunks.There is an almost narrative established in her works, with a solo female cyclist eternally pedaling. The viewer does not know from whence she came, neither her destination. With conical hat, and downcast face she seems focused and determined; struggling, cycling against the odds. Like she is caught up in an eternal race against time, the cyclist ventures on through works representing varied daylight hours. Works in gradations of blue appear as pre dawn or early evening with their soft, cool tones. Works in green and white are akin to mid morning light, while works in shades of yellow, orange and red exude the searing heat of the mid-afternoon sun in Vietnam. Born in Hanoi, like many other artists, Trang’s mind was engraved with images of Hanoi and the Northern villages. That’s why her painting is always a vivid landscape of the villagers and their life.

In her painting, Trang doesn’t try to describe what she saw but what she felt. These are memories of the places where she lived or passed by.Every moment of life has been bringing the artist to the feelings that she likes to express in her works: women going to the market from early dawn, farmers hastening to cycle on the village roads, peaceful afternoons or hot summer days…

Author : Phan Thu Trang

Check out the details and don’t forget the deadline: 5th April 2013.

Consumers online – like consumers everywhere – are befuddled with the sheer amount of information that finds a way into their conscious (and sometimes unconscious) minds. For marketers, making a splash or to come across as unique is certainly difficult. Marketers almost wish that they were natural attention seekers.

As if the onslaught of information wasn’t enough, the growing use of smartphones and tablets add to the increasing opportunities for businesses to expose their content. Today, there are even more ways to approach the already loaded information base that consumers will gain access to. As a result, what shows up at the touch of a customer’s touch-screen has to work flawlessly. Pages should load fast, text and images should be fluid to resolve to appropriate screen sizes, and much more.

Businesses with websites now have to figure out ways to at least make themselves available where their customers are, which is everywhere. From a strict web site design point of view, customers are available on desktops, laptops, and mobile devices (smartphones and tablets).

How do you make sure that your website shows up appropriately across all screen sizes and devices? How do you develop websites that work on every device, today and tomorrow?  What does it take to be presentable while making your websites work for you? Can a mobile website function just as well as a traditional, more robust desktop version? Apparently, yes.

Here are some tips to turn any website into a completely responsive design so that it’s ready for the mobile devices and tablets:

Mobile is where your website (also) has to be

Mobile is a revolution – the only difference is that it’s a dramatic revolution that happened gradually. According to a Techcrunch release, which alludes to ComScore statistics, more than 100 million U.S mobile subscribers are using smartphones already. This is a 13% since October 2011. A Nielson report revealed that more than 66% of Americans aged with between 24-35 own smartphones.

Guess what? That’s just U.S. Then there’s an entire world of consumers with busy thumbs on touch screens. For web designers and for businesses, mobile website design (responsive design) is going to be a staple faster than ever.

Responsive design has an actual need

Responsive web design isn’t going to help you get awards for creativity. It’s not going to make most people say “wow” – at least, not the way you are used to. Yet, responsive web design is actually going to make users browse the right way; it’d help them find something on your website quick and easy.

Follow what Aurora Gatbonton teaches with her blog post on Hongkiat.com. Whittle your work down to specifics, right from the word go: decide on the screen resolutions, break up pages into smaller portions or chunks, keep the design simple, throw in options to visit the full-page website (just in case), keep the navigation basic, keep user text inputs minimal, etc.

Change your present site into a responsive one

For all the talk about website design, it could be that you might already have a website and you could be looking to turn that website into a responsive one. You might not you’d not want to start from scratch again. In that case, you don’t really have to reinvent the wheel. Vandelay Design has this great blog post on How to turn any site into a Responsive Site, which features tools, plugins (forWordpress-based sites), jQuery plugins, frameworks, and lots of other cool stuff you can use.

If you already have a website, chances are that you can turn into a responsive design.

Strip it all away

Too much is bad, especially for mobile –based websites and applications for iPhone and Android. Web designers just won’t get it; business owners wouldn’t find a compelling need for it. It’s easy to say, “keep it simple” and it would just be almost impossible to implement. Not to mention the guts it takes to do just that.

Look at what Steve Jobs did with the first iPhone. Blackberry phones were popular for the keyboard-enabled, super-fast emailing function that those phones were wildly popular for. Out comes with Steve Jobs with the iPhone that was actually made for “sophisticated dummies”. The iPhone came with the popular features stripped off entirely: Physical keyboard and video. The iPhone had nothing but a superbly solid iOS to operate and a spectacular, industry-shattering UI.

Simplicity in design is the hardest thing to achieve for businesses and web-designers. Try it to experience the challenge.

Use HTML 5, Mobile JQuery

Ethan Marcotte first coined the term “Responsive Web Design” in his seminal article at A List Apart, and it’s been the hottest thing that ever happened to the web. Technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and Mobile JQuery were developed for optimizing websites for mobile phones and tablets. jQuery mobile framework, for instance, follows the mantra of “write less, do more”.

The latest jQuery Mobile version allows you to develop touch-optimized web frameworks for smartphones and tablets. The framework provides a unified, HTML5 based user interface system for helping designers or developers build websites for all sorts of screen sizes – all of this built on the rock-solid, extremely popular jQuery UI foundation.

Learn from examples

We have  a great list of 30 examples of responsive web designs  that you should actually take your time to coast through simply because when you look at these designs, you get “inspiration”. Now, that’s something you can’t pay to get. As you peruse through each of these exemplary designs, something strikes at you, deep inside.

One of these designs is going to jump out at you. You could somehow see a connection with that design. Further, it could just be the kind of design you might want to create. Whether you are a designer, business owner, or a marketer, you got to be drawing inspiration from these sources when you aren’t working.

Clearly, your website now needs to show up on multiple screens and devices. The responsive designs that will show up on mobiles cannot have excess baggage. You’ll have to focus on creating practical, functional, fast-loading, and responsive pages for those designs.

How are you going to do it?

Author Bio:

Pete Juratovic is the Strategic Director and founder of Clikzy Creative, a website design company in Washington, DC. Clikzy Creative also offers fashion website design, search engine optimization, and many other services.