Artist Levalet headlined this year’s Roads Street Art Festival, which brought together street mosaics, basketball, DJs, and more in Orleans, France this past April. For the festival, Levalet (a.k.a. Charles Leval) created several new craft paper and India ink works which include a large-scale chamleon, hazmat suit-clad mailmen, and car crammed onto the side of a glass elevator shaft.

Levalet continues his tradition of producing life-size or larger than life works, while also injecting humor into these urban additions. In another new work for Orleans, a man rests on top of an electrical box while filming himself with an old-school camera. “Cinema” is painted behind the lounging man, which adds a humorous bent to the black and white subject’s selfie-obsessed film. (via StreetArtNews)

Marissa Meyer of Google found that an additional delay of a mere 0.5 seconds to page load time resulted in a 20% decrease in traffic!

And she was not alone. Greg Linden of Amazon found something similar.

During split-testing and A/B tests they tried delaying the page in increments of 100 milliseconds and they found that even very small delays would result in substantial and costly drops in profits and revenues.

In another survey 94% of the people said they won’t trust a website if it has a poor design. The same research found that sites with dark color schemes grew at the rate of 2% and sites with light color schemes showed a 1.3% growth rate. I can supply you with more and more data but I think you get the point.

Below I have collected a list of four good quality web design blogs that you should start reading if you want to improve your designing skills.

1) IM Now — This is the official blog of the website IM creator.

The blog is intended to give you the latest information about the web design industry. For example their article headed Must Have Skills For A Successful Web Design Career gives you useful tips on what skill set to have to succeed in web design.

The company, IM Creator, provides website creation services which makes site designing so easy that even those with no design or coding skills can create and publish a website.

2) Codrops — Codrops is a web design and development blog that publishes articles and tutorials giving its readers fresh insights into web trends, techniques, and new possibilities.

The website was started as an experimental blog but it soon became an exciting playground for sharing the passion for web design and web development.

The Internet is changing every day, pushing the boundaries of how websites are built from the fundamental structure to the most delicate interaction effects. And at Codrops they share that information so that you can stay in sync with these changes.

3) Treehouse — This website’s mission is to bring affordable, technology education to people everywhere, in order to help them achieve their dreams.

Actually the site is dedicated to teaching website design and mobile development for Android and iOS. Founded by Ryan Carson and Alan Johnson, Treehouse gives people affordable ways to learn about technology and business. They have a rich library in which you can explore projects, video tutorials, and workshops on everything you need to know to build a website and roll out apps to mobile marketplaces.

4) Web Design Ledger — The Web Design Ledger is a website which publishes articles which are written by web designers, for web designers. The primary purpose of this website is to act as a platform for sharing web design related knowledge and resources. Topics range from design inspiration to tips and tutorials and things related to that.

It is a developer-authored publication offering digital design knowledge and resources. The articles here range from interesting new web design examples to free Wireframe kits, the website is a world in itself of web design news, articles and tutorials.

I hope this list of four websites above would have helped you in some way. Let me know in the comments below what you think of this list.

In what is to follow you will be exposed to the main five reasons why you should go for this platform. You will see that this has only advantages for you (whether you are a buyer or an author) and as a result you should definitely have a look at the following lines.

1. Price-performance ratio: Right from the beginning it was mentioned the fact that CGStudio is focused on offering people endless opportunities, which is why here you will be able to find products with a lower price/performance ratio. To be more precise, at CGStudio you will get high quality products at an incredibly low price.
2. Great variety: Everyone knows that it is extremely hard to satisfy everyone’s taste. However, when there is diversity and a wide range of products customers will definitely find what they need for their business. At CGStudio, there are more than 27.000 textures, HDRI and 3D models for professionals; which definitely means that you will be able to find the ideal piece for your commercial or personal activity.
4.  CGStudio 3D models: CGStudio 3D models are available in various file formats and if these happen not to be compatible then the people behind this concept will convert them for you in any possible format. Also, as it was already mentioned these come in a wide range and as far as their specifications are concerned, these include: 3D print ready, game ready, animated and rigged.
5. 60% royalty rate: Authors should know that here they are offered a flat 60% royalty rate. As far as the VAT is concerned this is covered from their profit margin without reducing the royalty rate, nor charging the customers. Another thing that will certainly make you happy and encourage you to collaborate with CGStudio is the fact that they desire to increase the royalty rate for all authors to 65%, in 2015.
6. No hidden fees: There are certain companies that require you to pay certain fees, in order to open an account or to list your products. But, as far as this marketplace is concerned there are no such fees. This means that you won’t be required to pay anything nor for the opening neither for the renewal of your account.

Besides these 5 reasons there are many more motives why you should go for this platform. For instance, there is no exclusivity lock-in (you are allowed to sell your products anywhere), the team behind the CGStudio program will help you sell your creations, and last but not least you will set your own prices.

The Monument to the Soviet Army is situated in the King’s Garden in the heart of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. Built in 1954, it was created as a symbol of gratitude for the Soviet Red Army for helping Bulgaria on their war efforts during the second World War. The monument depicts a soldier of the Soviet Army, surrounded by a male worker and a female peasant from Bulgaria.

The monument has been the victim to vandalism. The first act of vandalism was on June 2011, when the monument was painted overnight by unknown artists, who transformed the Soviet Army soldiers into popular American superheroes and cartoon characters including Superman, Joker, Captain America, Santa Claus, Wolverine, The Mask, and Wonder Woman. A caption was painted underneath which translates as “In pace with the times”. The event was widely covered by the international media and provoked serious pro and anti-Russian discussion in the Bulgarian society.

Three sisters have unleashed their creativity on the small Taiwanese village of Huija with a series of colourful murals. The sisters were on a holiday visiting their grandmother when they decided to paint the outside of her home with cartoon characters including Daruma dolls, which are a good luck charm in Japan. On one of the windows they painted a sign that reads: “This is where grandmother lives.”

After that other villagers imitated them and painted there own walls, and soon the whole village was filled with colourful murals.

The village rarely saw tourists but now they have tourists almost everyday. During the weekends, tourists mostly from Hong Kong and China flock the village.

via Amusing Planet

Odeith was, in 2005, internationally recognized for his groundbreaking incursions in the anamorphic art field, standing out for his compositions created in perspective and painted in different surfaces, such as 90º corners or from the wall to the floor, creating an optical illusion effect.

In 2008, he decided to close his tattoo studio (which he opened in 1999) and moved to London.

Currently, back in Lisbon, he assumed painting as his main activity, having created large scale murals for major national and international enterprises such as the London Shell, Kingsmill, the Coca-Cola Company, Estradas de Portugal, Samsung, Sport Lisboa e Benfica (football club) and several Portuguese city halls such as Câmara Municipal de Lisboa and Câmara Municipal de Oeiras, amongst others.

Fisher and his London-based firm Stufish recently drew a lot of attention to with the completion of two real-life buildings that transform their entertainment-industry pedigree into permanent spectacle. The Han Show Theater in Wuhan, China, is a performance arts center complete with a glowing façade.

The design takes some of the principles of Stufish’s other work and makes them slightly more traditionally architectural. Inspired by Chinese lanterns, the building is a series of steel rings that intersect to mimic the bamboo structure of a paper lantern. Thousands of red LEDs give off a glowing effect on the concave surface. The façade can also display videos, making it come alive. Traditional Chinese roof forms are referenced as the bottom edge of the lantern form is offset.

Every winter Washington-based photographer Angela Kelly in the freezing temperatures blows bubbles that freeze and form beautiful patches of ice crystals. The breathtaking results, which she photographs for her series Life in a Bubble, look like glass or crystal marbles.

Kelly uses a homemade solution of dish soap and water to create the bubbles. Some of the smaller bubbles freeze in mid-air and fall to the ground, shattering upon impact, others crystalize and retain their pristine shape. No two bubbles look the same, as each forms different patterns. Decorated with elegant swirls and scallops, feathery etchings, and snowflake-like designs the frozen globes are truly beautiful.

Botanical artist Makoto Azuma has consistently looked for new ways to capture the beauty of plants like flowers and bonsai by placing them in incredibly unique settings. In the past, he has frozen and suspended bonsai trees, submerged them underwater, and even launched bonsai and flowers into space. His latest exhibition, Ice Flowers, offers a distinctive look at the changed life cycles of flower bouquets that have been encased in blocks of ice.

Situated in a warehouse near Tokyo, the spectacular exhibition consists of 16 frozen floral arrangements displayed in rows throughout the space. Stems, petals, and leaves are distorted through the thick layers of ice, giving each bouquet a new appearance. Although the blooms initially shine with color and vitality, that beauty will gradually fade as the blocks of ice melt, leaving behind withered flowers and puddles of water.

“Flowers will show unique expressions that they do not display in everyday life, by placed under such a different environment,” Azuma writes on his website. “Please enjoy how flowers and ice change themselves over time in the ruins far from human’s existence—it is an inorganic space that makes a vivid contrast with flowers.”

Richard Swarbrick is a multi-media director based in London.

His creative and technical skills have been developed through a career encompassing film editing, photography and graphic design. He is also an accomplished After Effects operator.

As a director, Richard has developed a remarkable range of animation techniques many of which he combines to great effect with live action.

His football animations ‘Bale’ and ‘El Clasico’ have had huge viral impact internationally clocking up over a million views on YouTube alone and have featured on myriad newspaper and magazine sites as well as football, film and cultural blogs.

View Richard’s amazing above or on Twitter.