One of the challenges of being a web designer is the need for continual improvement. While you will certainly gain experience and improve skills through client projects, it’s also necessary to dedicate some time outside of client work to focus on new skills and staying up-to-date with an industry that changes at a rapid pace.

Since we all have busy schedules to start with, getting a real impact with the time you set aside for learning is essential. In this article we’ll take a look at some things that you can do today to improve your abilities in some way. Even with just a small amount of time available, there are things that you can do with a focus on continual growth and improvement.

1. Take a Critical Look at Your Recent Work

One quick way to identify some areas for potential improvement is to go back and look at some of the projects that you have completed in the past few months. Obviously, taking a critical look at your work throughout the design process is important to any project, but sometimes having some time away from the project will allow you to come back and view it with a different perspective. So if you’ve had a few months away from a project you may be able to see things more objectively than you could while you were working on the project.

Maybe you’ll see some things that could have been done differently or better. These types of lessons can be useful on other projects going forward, making your past experience even more of a learning experiment.

2. Seek Feedback and Constructive Criticism

While looking critically at you own work is important, you’ll also gain a lot from getting feedback from others. This includes feedback from clients, users, and other designers. Taking feedback and constructive criticism isn’t always fun, but if you look at it as a way to improve your skills and make yourself a better designer, it’s really a good thing.

Resources like Concept Feedback exist specifically to help designers get feedback on their work (also see our post 19 Resources for Getting Design Feedback). Community sites like Dribbble, Forrst, and UCreative are also great resources for getting feedback on your work.

3. Examine the Work of a Talented Designer

One way to learn is to study the work of talented and experienced designers. Observe their work and the design decisions that they have made on their projects. For example, if studying web design projects you can look at things like layouts, calls to action, white space, color schemes, typography, and even fine pixel-precise details of the design. The things you pick up could serve as inspiration for your own work.

Chances are you probably already have a few specific designers that you admire, but if not, community sites like Dribbble and Forrst are also ideal for identifying talented designers to follow.

4. Get Back to the Basics

In an industry that changes so quickly it’s easy to get caught up in trends and the newest tools and resources to use in your work. Sometimes it helps to make a deliberate effort to get back to the basics and brush up on fundamentals like design theory and color theory. A great place to start is this post compiled by Psdtuts+, 50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory.

If you already have a solid knowledge and understanding of design theory it’s not a bad idea to brush up on these topics occasionally. And if you have never devoted much time or effort to the basics, today is a great time to start.

5. Follow a Tutorial to Learn Something New

There are thousands of helpful tutorials available online, not to mention those that are offered in magazines and books. If you have a few hours to spare, why not find a tutorial that will help you to learn something new, or to expand on the skills that you already have? Most likely there is something that you have been wanting to learn more about, and there is probably already a good tutorial written that covers exactly what you want to learn.

Sites like Psdtuts+, Nettuts+, Webdesigntuts+, Tutorial9, and Design Instruct are excellent places to find tutorials to follow. Of course, there are countless other sites and blogs that publish design and development tutorials, so find some that you like and subscribe to their RSS feeds.

6. Start a Personal Project

A personal project can be anything that you do on your own, rather than for a client. It could be starting a blog, building an e-commerce site, developing a new community site, and really the possibilities are endless. Personal projects are great because they provide you with an opportunity to experiment in whatever way you want in a real world situation. You are the one making the decisions, so you can take it in any direction that you want, allowing you to gain valuable experience. Just about anything you could want to learn can be done through a personal project if you are able to put in the time.

Personal projects can be done at a lot of different levels. If you have only a small amount of time available there are opportunities, and if you are looking to create something major that will require a lot of time going forward, you can do that too. Another benefit of personal projects is that you also have the potential to make money to supplement your client work. Whether it is through selling products, selling ad space, affiliate promotions, or some other type of income, personal projects have turned into significant sources of income for many designers.

7. Re-Design for the Fun of It

One fun type of challenge is to re-design a popular website for the fun (and learning) of it. While your design isn’t going to be used by the company it can still help you to solve problems and make design decisions just like you would if you were actually designing the site in the real world. Of course, it doesn’t have to be a popular website. Just choose a site that you think you could improve and that you could learn from the experience.

If you want to see examples of such designs, see 18 Cool Concept Designs of Notable Websites at Hongkiat. As you can see, designing in this way can even bring you some exposure in addition to providing a valuable learning experience.

8. Sign Up for a Class

There are plenty of online courses, as well as those at local universities or community colleges that could help you to learn new skills and to build on the ones that you already have. Not everyone has the time available to take a class, but if you do, it may be something worth exploring. Even if you are not interested in working towards a degree there may be a particular course that could help you to learn something that would be valuable to your work.

9. Take Photos

Photography is a favorite hobby of many designers, and the two fields have a lot in common. Not only is photography a fun activity, but it can also be a learning experience for designers. Things like composition and colors are critical to good photography, and the lessons can also be applied to graphic design. For more on the subject, see Why Designers Should Take Up Photography at Design Instruct.

Taking up photography as a hobby is ideal because it is possible regardless of how much, or how little, time you have available. Subjects for photography are all around us. You don’t have to leave your town, or even your house, to start experimenting with photography. And you also don’t need an expensive camera, simple point and shoot cameras will do for these purposes. If you enjoy it and you want to take it further a more expensive camera can wind up being a good investment.

10. Visit an Art Museum

Most cities have an art museum of some kind. Why not take part of a day to go visit the art museum nearest to you? You can view the work of highly-talented artists and pick up some inspiration that can be put to work in your own design. Many designers rely only on online sources for design inspiration, but getting out and being inspired by other types of art can help to open up more creativity in your work.

What’s Your Experience?

When you want to learn something new or improve your skills, what are your preferences?

Most professional digital photos are touched up in some way or another. Photoshop is, of course, one of the leading programs for photo editing, so learning the basics of the possible photo editing techniques can have a positive impact on the end result of your photography. For designers, many photos that are provided by clients will need some touch ups to get the best look possible.

In this post we’ll link to 25 helpful tutorials that teach different aspects of photo editing in Photoshop.

How to Reduce Digital Noise in a Photograph

Create Hipstamatic and Instagram Style Effects with Photoshop and Retrographer

Professional Sharpening Techniques in Photoshop

Realistic Portrait Retouching with Photoshop

Apply a Color Effect to a Photo

Color Correcting Photographs Using the Curves Adjustment

Giving Your Photograph an Antique Look

How to Whiten Teeth in Photoshop

How to Intensify Your Landscape Photos in Photoshop

Photo Color Correction for the Amateur Photographer

Editing Shortcuts in Photoshop

Retro Photo Effects

Glamor Retouch Tutorial

Create a Retro Film Roll Camera Effect with Bokeh

Quick Tutorial for Perfectly Toning a Picture in Photoshop

Control Tonality with Photoshop’s Black and White Filter

Radial Zoom Enhanced Eyes Effect in Photoshop

How to Blend Textures with Photos in Photoshop

Simulate Film Grain in an Image with Photoshop

Realistic Cast Shadow Effect with Photoshop

Colorizing Images with Gradients in Photoshop

Add a Lens Flare Effect Non-Destructively with Blend Modes

Action Zoom Blurring Effect in Photoshop

Natural Portrait Retouch

Cross Processing Effect

You may also be interested in these posts from our archives:

• Learn Photo Editing
• 45 Photo Editing Tutorials for Photoshop
• 33 Photoshop Photo Editing Tutorials
• 35+ Photo Editing Tutorials for Photoshop
• 60 Photoshop Tutorials for Photo Touch-Ups
• 30 Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tips and Tutorials
• 30 of the Best Websites for Online Photo Editing

Magazine-style layouts are very popular for blogs and news sites that publish high volumes of content. This style of layout typically shows excerpts of headlines of articles from a variety of different categories or topics on the front page, allowing visitors to have easy access to more content compared to a typical blog-style layout.

In this post we’ll showcase 21 different magazine-style designs for your own inspiration.

Glamour Paris

The Boston Globe

The Style Spy

Proxart

Vulture

Mad About Makeup

Toronto Standard

The Brief

Amusement

Lense.fr

The Inside Source

The Verge

Melbourne Geek

Beware

50 & Nifty

Pacsun Music

Blizz Blog

Her Royal Majesty

The Alpha Geek

OldSkull

Dazed Digital

For more design inspiration please see:

• 25 Websites with Awesome Backgrounds
• Showcase of Outstanding Portfolio Websites
• 25 Corporate Websites for Design Inspiration
• 25 Well-Designed Church Websites
• Examples of Testimonials in Web Design

While dark backgrounds don’t work well in all situations, they can help to create a great-looking website in the right situation. Looking for inspiration for designing a dark website of your own? In this post we’ll showcase 25 examples of beautiful dark websites to help get the creativity flowing.

Shopify

The Mid-Century Modernist

Worry Free Labs

Fully Illustrated

qindex

Michelle Carrillo

Moresoda

Skyclerk

Vitamin T

Founders Fund

CAMS

Enlightening Quotes

Anders Hojland Mikkelsen

Kerry Edward Graphic Design

Scribble & Tweak

Abbell Associates

DonQ Rum

Adrian Baxter

Blacktie

Ryan Hwang

Fookcover

Black Rabbit

Indubitablee

Jet Cooper

Makalu Interactive

For more design inspiration please see:

• 25 Websites with Amazing Backgrounds
• 25 Corporate Websites for Design Inspiration
• 25 Beautiful Ecommerce Websites
• Design Trends: Ribbons, Banners, and Badges
• Showcase of Patterns in Web Design

Some of the most inviting website designs use elements inspired by nature. Whether it is a large photo background, an illustration of nature, or some other element, nature-inspired designs appeal to many visitors, and they are an ideal fit with certain industries and companies.

In this post we’ll showcase 25 nature-inspired websites for your own design inspiration.

Lake Nona

Fell and Mountain

Efficax Energy

Jibe Visuals

Grade Studios

OPResume

Goatee Joe

CSS Rockets

Ideaware

Tureta Travel

CEROIDEAS

Priid

Vibe Themes

Bear Grylls Live

Allure Graphic Design

Sproutlet

Iceberg Quest

White Lotus Aromatics

Crescendo

The Georgian Wine Society

Team Viget

Jennings Brewery

Aussie BBQ Legends

Stephan Siegrist

Andrina Peric Photography

For more design inspiration please see:

• 25 Websites with Awesome Backgrounds
• 25 Corporate Websites for Design Inspiration
• Showcase of Outstanding Portfolio Websites
• 25 Beautiful Ecommerce Websites
• 25 Websites Using Subtle Textures

Annual reports are important for presenting information to a company’s investors, so having an annual report that looks professional and presents a good image can certainly help the cause. The design of the report is, of course, secondary to the content, but still important.

In this post we’ll showcase some examples of annual report design for your own inspiration. These samples come from the Behance Network, and in most cases you can see more images from each annual report by clicking on the image and following the link to Behance.

TRANSPETRO

Anthon B. Nilsen

Pliva

HUO AO

Col·legi de Censors Jurats de Comptes de Catalunya

Environment Waikato

Amnesty International Hong Kong

Celtic Explorations

Legal Defense Fund

Heinz

Banco do Brasil

UHAUL

Kennedy Space Center

Aguirre Newman

Railinc

Queensland Museum Foundation

Gibson

Starbucks

Savanna

Quiksilver

ClimateWorks

Number Group

Nathan’s Famous

American Apparel

NLMK

For more design inspiration please see:

• Showcase of Beautiful Flyer Design
• Brochure Design Showcase
• 35 Quality Brochure Templates
• Graffiti Art Showcase

Bloggers typically dedicate a lot of thought and effort into topics that should be covered with their upcoming posts, and rightfully so, but older posts are often quickly forgotten both by the blogger and by readers. As a blog continues to publish new content the archives will grow larger and larger, and for many blogs the archives include a wealth of information and content that is not being maximized.

For most blogs, posts from the archives can continue to be useful for years to come (of course, this depends on the specific content of the post) if they are actually seen by visitors. The archives can be helpful for a number of different purposes, including attracting new subscribers, building a newsletter list, selling products, promoting your own services, promoting affiliate products, selling advertising, and more.

If your blog has been around for a while, chances are you have archives that could be doing more for you, and helping more readers at the same time. If you’re looking to get more out of your archives there are two things that you need to know first:

1. What posts from the archives are already attracting visitors? You probably have some specific posts that attract search engine traffic on a consistent basis, or maybe a popular website or blog linked to one of your posts and it results in a consistent flow of referral traffic.

2. What posts from your archives would you like to get more exposure? Maybe these are you best quality posts that would showcase your expertise, or maybe they would be good for promoting a related product or service.

Tips for Improving Posts That Already Attract Visitors

So you’ve done some analytics research and you know that a few of your posts attract a decent number of pageviews each month without any effort from you. Most likely they get a steady flow of traffic from search engines, but it could be other sources as well. The typical situation is that you probably created a quality blog post, it attracted some links, you haven’t paid any attention to it since then, but it still gets a steady flow of traffic. The traffic is great, but it could be much more valuable to you if that traffic is converted into something specific. That “something specific” will depend on your blog, the subject and content of the particular post, and the approach you want to take with your blog.

Here are some tips for getting more out of these types of blog posts.

Think of the Post as a Landing Page

Landing pages are used for increasing conversions. Often it is the page where a visitor lands after clicking on an advertisement, and there are a few common characteristics of landing pages. An effective landing page will have a clear purpose, it will lead visitors towards the desired action, and it typically will include as few distractions as possible. Blog posts are usually much different from landing pages, but the posts in your archives can essentially serve a similar purpose. A landing page is measured by it’s effectiveness at converting visitors, often in terms of a conversion percentage. While blog posts are not measured in the same way, if you can make some tweaks to a blog post in your archives so that it gets more conversions it will be doing a better job to help grow your blog.

Here are some ways that you can evaluate a blog post from your archives to think of it more like a landing page:

How are people arriving to the post? And what are they looking for?

We know that the post is already attracting some traffic on its own, but the source of the traffic will tell you more about the specific people who are arriving. Are they coming to your post through search engines? If so, what search phrases are they using? Are they coming via links from other sites and blogs? If so, what is the content of the page that is sending the traffic to you, and what is being said about your post when they are linking to it? Once you know this information you’ll know more about the mindset of the average visitor that is arriving at your post and what content they are after.

As was already mentioned, landing pages are often used with advertisements. So in that case the designer of the landing page knows where the visitors will be coming from, or at least what type of ad they will be clicking on when they are led to the landing page. The landing page is then tailored to appeal to this audience and to address their concerns.

What type of conversion do you want?

If you’re going to think of the post as a landing page you will need to have a specific conversion in mind that you would like visitors to take. It could be to subscribe to the blog, buy a product, sign up to your mailing list, like your Facebook page, click on an ad, etc. Once you know the conversion that you want it will be much easier to make the appropriate changes that will lead to that action.

Is there anything that needs to be added for the conversion?

Say for example that you are working to improve the value of a blog post that was originally published 1 year ago. Six months ago you released a product of your own for sale. That product is promoted in your sidebar, but sidebar promotions are generally much less effective than promotions within the content of a post or page. So in this case you may have a post that was published before the product was created, but the topic of the blog post is directly related to the product and those who are reading the post fit into the target market of the product. In this case you may benefit from going back and adding a paragraph to the post to mention your product, and include an “add to cart” or “buy now” button right from within the post content.

If you don’t have your own products, similar things could be done with affiliate products. The details of the call to action will vary depending on the post and what you want to promote, but the idea is to include a stronger call to action. This can work even if you are not selling anything. For example, if you want to increase conversions to your mailing list you could edit the post content to mention that you provide similar information through your newsletter, and include a sign up form or a link to a page where people can sign up.

What product or service could you develop for this audience?

In some cases you may want to think about developing a new product or service in order to have something to offer to the visitors that are arriving to a specific post. This is probably only relevant in situations where the post from your archives is attracting substantial traffic, and the visitors are using search phrases indicating that they are in buying mode. You wouldn’t want to take weeks or months to develop a product to promote on a post that doesn’t get enough traffic to justify the effort. But one of the most difficult aspects of selling a product is getting it in front of the right people. If you already have a post that is attracting the people you could create a product that matches what they are looking for, and the promotion work will be much easier.

If you are considering developing a product or service you may want to test the demand for it by simply promoting a similar product as an affiliate. Chances are there is already a similar product that has an affiliate program. It would take very little time to sign up for the affiliate program and edit the post content to include some basic info about the product with your affiliate link. If the product sells very well, maybe it would be worth your time to create a product of your own. If it doesn’t sell very well, chances are the demand would also not be that great for your own product and it may not be worth the time to create.

What distractions could you eliminate?

One of the key elements to increasing conversions with landing pages is eliminating unnecessary elements and distractions. This often includes limiting navigational options that can take visitors away from the landing page before they have made a decision on the call to action.

In the case of a blog post you are probably not going to go as far, but there may be some distractions that could be eliminated to draw more attention on the call to action. Some obvious examples would include links within the post content. In general, links within a post are a good thing because they can be of use to the reader. But if you are trying to increase some type of conversion make sure that other links within the post content are relevant and necessary. Links that are excessive or unnecessary, whether it be internal links to other posts on your blog or external links to other sites, can be removed.

Maybe there are ads on your blog that distract from the call to action that you are looking for from this particular post. Maybe everything in the sidebar is an unnecessary distraction. In these cases you may want to create a separate template for the post that will limit the distractions. WordPress users can use plugins like Single Post Template (there are other similar plugins as well) to specify a template for an individual post. It will take a little bit of extra work to create the post template, but it’s a great way to control the most important posts in your archives. For example, you could create a template that removes AdSense or any outside advertising and instead promote your own product that is relevant to readers of the post. Likewise, you could use the template to promote a high-paying affiliate product that is highly relevant to the topic of the post.

Use a Popup or Notification Bar

Popups are kind of annoying, but when they are used effectively they get results. Maybe you don’t want to use a popup on every post/page of your blog, but that one specific post from your archives that attracts a lot of new visitors from search engines would be ideal for promoting your newsletter or blog subscription. Popup Domination is a popular plugin that helps to promote your mailing list, and it gives you control to show it only on pages and categories that you want.

Notification bars at the top or bottom of browser windows are also helpful for increasing conversions, and many visitors find them to be less intrusive than popups. For WordPress users there are a number of notification bar plugins available, but FooBar allows you to show a customized message on specific posts. This can be really helpful for increasing the effectiveness of posts in your archives because each one can use a message that is highly relevant to readers. Use the notification bar to promote one of your products, an affiliate product, your mailing list, a free e-book, or anything that is relevant to readers.

If you promote a lot of affiliate products on your blog FooBar is a great resource. Look at the posts in your archives that attract the most traffic, find affiliate products that are highly relevant to the topic of the post, and create a FooBar just for that post that will send traffic to your affiliate link.

Use the Post to Funnel Visitors

Maybe the posts from your archive that receive the most traffic aren’t really all that important to your blog. Maybe there is no relevant product or service that you could promote and the options for generating some type of valuable conversion is really limited. In this case you may want to use the post to funnel visitors to another page or post on your site that would be more valuable to you.

You could go about this by adding a brief message at the top of the content with a link to the desired page/post. This is especially helpful if the page/post that you are directing visitors to is an update to the post, or is directly relevant to the exact top of the post. Obviously, it won’t work as well if you are trying to direct people to a page/post that isn’t so relevant.

Create an Ad Spot Specifically for the Post

If you have a specific post or a category of posts that attract a lot of visitors, you may want to explore the idea of selling advertising on those specific posts. Most blog advertising is site wide, which makes it easy to manage. But by creating ads for specific pages you can make the ads more relevant to visitors, get higher click-through rates for advertisers, and higher rates for yourself. For example, if you have a site wide ad slot that sells for $3 per 1,000 impressions, you may be able to sell the same ad on a specific post for $6 per 1,000 impressions to an advertiser who has a product that is a great fit for the topic of the post. Creating post-specific ads can be easily done with the Single Post Template plugin that was already mentioned.

Tips for Improving Traffic to Specific Posts in Your Archives

So far we have looked at a number of things that you can do to increase the effectiveness of posts that are already receiving traffic. Maybe you have posts in your archives that could be really valuable, but they just don’t attract much attention. This happens all the time with blogs because new content is typically what gets the most attention, and older posts can easily get buried. Here we’ll look at some things you can do to get more out of these posts.

Add More Internal Links

One of the easiest and most effective things that you can do is to simply add more links to the posts that you want to get more attention. This could be links within the content of new posts that you publish, it could mean going back and editing old posts to include links, or it could mean creating related post links at the end of your posts. A lot of blogs show links to related posts at the end of each post, but the problem with automated related posts lists is that you have very little (if any) control over which posts are included. If you want to direct attention to a specific post (or multiple specific posts) you can manually add the related links at the end of posts and this way you are sure to get more links to the posts that are most important.

Turn it Into a Post Series

If you want to attract more attention to a specific blog post, consider posting turning it into a series by posting on a different aspect of the same topic. Of course, in all follow up posts you will include a link to your original post that you want to get the increased traffic.

Link to it from the Sidebar

Most blog sidebar’s include links to popular or important posts from the blog’s archives. Adding a link to the sidebar can help to get more life out of your post.

Promote Pillar Content in the Footer of Your RSS Feed

Pillar content is a term that refers to your highest-quality content that is useful to extremely readers and is basically your most important, most representative content. There are a number of WordPress plugins that can be used to add content to the footer of your RSS feed. Some bloggers use ebooks or specific content as a bonus for subscribers, and then link to those bonuses in the footer of the RSS feed. The same thing can be done to promote posts from your archives if there are specific posts that should be getting more attention.

Make it “Sticky”

Blogs typically display the most recent post at the top of the front page, but it doesn’t have to be this way. WordPress users can make any post “sticky”, which means that it will remain on the front page and have priority over new posts. To do this click on the “edit” link next to “Public”, and then check the box for “stick this post to the front page”.

Of course, this isn’t something that you will want to use in all situations, but it is one possibility that can be considered.

Add to Navigation Menu

In some situations, if the post is extremely important, you may want to consider adding a link to it in your navigation menu. This is definitely something that will not apply to most situations, but if the post in your archives is one of the most important things on you site, you could consider it.

Convert it into an E-Book

Sometimes you can gain more exposure for your content simply by re-packaging it. If the content of a post in your archives deserves more attention one option is to convert it into a PDF e-book or special report and distribute it that way. You could give away the PDF from other pages on your site, or even offer it to other bloggers to give away to their readers. You could do this with a single post, or you could combine several posts and use them as chapters in a book.

What Are Your Thoughts?

Do you face the challenge of getting more out of your blog archives? Have you found any good solutions or ideas for accomplishing this?

Unique business cards can help you to stand out to potential clients. Being more memorable will often result in being more likely to get hired. Fortunately, there are all kinds of possibilities to create unique business cards. In this post we’ll showcase 30 examples for your own inspiration.

Popup Business Cards

QR Code Business Card

Tie-Shaped Business Card

Drink Me Creative

Optometrist Business Card

TAM Cargo

Paper Doll Business Card

Business Card Bird

3D Business Card

Plexiglass Business Card

Dog Treat Business Cards

Razor’s Edge Business Card

Pirate Treasure Card

Money Business Card

Disguise the Unworthy

Marianne Lock

Smiling Surface

Macomix

Megan Harrigan

Katie Evans

AppWare

Laptop Business Card

Dr. Federico Alvarez

Danielle Abisaab

Credit Counselling Society

Common

Wake Up Your Body

Asterix

Dylan Dylanco

Franco Caligiuri

For more inspiration please see:

• Die Cut Business Cards
• Letterpress Business Cards
• Double Sided Business Cards
• Embossed Business Cards
• Business Card Templates

UPDATE: This contest has ended. Winners are listed at the end of this post.

Our friends at MightyDeals have offered to give a free item to 5 lucky readers of the Vandelay Design blog!

MightyDeals is great resource for designers and developers who like to save money (and who doesn’t?). They offer amazing limited time discounts on a wide range of popular products, and they even give freebies from their site on occasion.

In addition to the several new deals that are released each week, MightyDeals also keeps some of the more popular deals on for a longer period of time. So at any point in time they probably have around 10 offers going on at once, most of which will have a savings from 25% – 80%.

Each time a new deal is released, which is almost every day, MightyDeals sends out a notification to their mailing list. So if you want to make sure you never miss a great deal, we recommend going to their site and subscribing.

The Giveaway Details:

Winners of this contest will get their choice of the items currently offered at MightyDeals at the time of this post. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post stating which item you would like if you were to win. On Tuesday, February 14th the winners will be selected at random. At that time this post will be updated to announce the winners, and the winners will be contacted by email.

UPDATE: The contest is now over. Thank you to everyone who participated. The winners are:

• Nick Shvelidze
• Anna
• Josh
• Mihaita
• Lawrence77

In recent years the use of large background photos and illustrations has become increasingly common in web design. In some cases the background image is the most distinct feature of the design.

There are all kinds of different backgrounds that can be used, like nature photos, nature illustrations, and abstract designs. In this post we’ll showcase 25 websites with impressive backgrounds that really make the sites stand out. If you’re looking to make a website or a design memorable, a large background may be a good option.

Museum of Science and Industry

Studio 7 Designs

Lift

365 Days of Astronomy

Ecoki iPhone Reader

Priid

Ray’s Lab

Shipment App

Nanda & Juan Diego

Small Studio

Wells Riley

The Kennedys

Yvan Rodic

Moods of Norway

Inservio Web Solutions

Noah Stokes

Fleming Steele

Digital Love

Centro Genesis

Stephan Siegrist

Grand Canyon Skywalk

Eastpoint Community Church

Havana Bar

Experience Wyndham

Drupalcon DC

For more design inspiration please see:

• Blog Design Showcase
• Portfolio Websites
• College and University Websites
• Real Estate Websites