Design usually means arranging things in an orderly, meaningful manner, but this week we’re throwing that out of the window and going for chaotic and whimsical sites. Happy 4th of July weekend, everyone, and welcome to this week’s Friday Focus!

Backgrounds are so called for a reason. They’re meant to support and complement instead of attract and distract. This week’s featured sites, however, provide a whole other level of interactivity and usefulness to backgrounds. You decide if they’re a good idea or not. Either way, they’re interesting concepts that can only be executed on the Web, so, enjoy!

This week on Friday Focus, we celebrate great icon design which carries the overall look of our featured websites.

This week on Friday Focus: websites that look like they made of paint, not pixels.

Nature-inspired websites come by the dozen these days, but this week’s featured designs up the ante. They’re really lovely, I promise!

Typography on the Web is growing bigger and bigger—literally! That is this week’s theme on Friday Focus.

This week’s Friday Focus features different institutions of society as design inspiration for the featured websites. Did they make you do a double-take too?

Everything old is new again this week on Friday Focus. This week: some 8-bit retro inspired websites!

It doesn’t happen a lot on Friday Focus, but this week we have a bunch of websites featured, all dressed up in brown.

In honor of Earth Day 2009, which took place this week, let’s look at organic, sustainable, eco-friendly websites not only in appearance but also in substance.