Ever since a Ukrainian friend mentioned them I regularly drop in on the website of Art Lebedev Studio, Russia’s leading design studio.

Whether it’s their constitution, product design (see Optimus Maximus Keyboard, GLONASS Satnav) or their diversity of work there is always something inspiring to browse. Of particular interest is the process section that accompanies each project.

Their less than common approach (”The only principle we follow is just two words: No bullshit.”) has not hindered success or size. A team of +200 work with the country’s largest corporates including Yandex (largest portal and most popular search engine) and Gazprom (largest company in Russia).

Both sites proudly display Art Lebedev’s logo and link at the bottom of their pages. I like the way these projects sit equally alongside fridge magnets or an identity for a baby club in their portfolio.

The studio founder has clearly succeeded in passing down and maintaining his design ideals and approach to running a company. I’d like to know how they juggle their approach with client’s differing views on online marketing. The only interview I could find points to a negative attitude to SEO and marketing.

Most recently I was drawn to a website design for a luxury hotel, the Felix Zawojski. The site has been crafted with wonderful attention to detail.  Take a look at these sketches and renderings, view panoramas or watch footage of The Great Train Robbery in every room.

The identity creation points to guests feeling as though they belong to a royal family – the website design certainly serves up a luxurious experience. However, you won’t find an online booking facility, e-newsletter sign up or special offers.

Perhaps that lends itself to the exclusivity. Although, with such care taken to educate and pamper the visitor, surely these features would further help retain and convert site prospects?

(“Design Will Save the World” is the studio’s motto)

Designers use visual cues such as colour schemes and images to help draw attention to certain parts of a web page. The more emotive these are, the more chance for positive feeling and a greater connection with the visitor.

Ask someone for memorable mascots and they may mention the late Jeeves from Ask Jeeves, before his departure and resulting search engine rebrand.

Or the annoying paperclip from Microsoft Office.  Another is the kangaroo used in the Australia logo.

Emotional engagement or eye candy?

Far too many sites and web applications lack a personality in copy and image selection. I recommend this video presentation at Vitamin to highlight the importance of copy in building a likeable web application.

Evoking positive feelings can be particularly important in web applications where they are intended to be used regularly and often at length by their audience.

Mascots aren’t going to work in all scenarios. They usually work best as animal or human-like creatures – as cute, fun creations.

We created a mascot for a Visit Britain campaign to promote a new B2B online service. The character, Mrs Pink, helped reach the audience in a friendly, innovative way and she is now used on offline material and e-newsletters.

The cute dog is a mascot we intend to use on a new site helping daytrippers find the best visitor attractions. We’d like to give name him, please send on any suggestions!

Visit London are rolling out a new identity.

The new logo (’Visit London’ and the body’s website address in red type) will replace

and the Totally London brand will be no longer.

And I’m sure you’ll agree, a tad less polarising than the London 2012 logo. The official launch will coincide with the Olympic handover in August.

The 11th Annual Webby Awards were handed out in New York on Tuesday. Yellowstonepark.com won the Tourism category grabbing both the Webby Award and the People’s Voice Winner. Wikitravel won for Travel and the People’s Voice Winner went to TripAdvisor.com.

The Webbys were first launched back in 2007. Here is a list of all the past travel and tourism winners: [Read more →]

I read on BBC news this morning that Jakob Nielsen believes the essentials of good design are being overlooked through the eagerness of web firms to implement Web 2.0 technologies.

I alluded to this in my comment in a recent post regarding the recently launched boo.com and that I felt the implementation of certain AJAX functionality had detracted from the user experience. Mr Nielsen also comments “They should get the basics right first,” and “Sadly most websites do not have those primary things right.”

Funnily enough, although, not particularly suprising, the writer cites a reference to the original boo.com regarding Mr. Nielsen’s warning of a return to the dotcom boom days, as an example of a site that looked great but was not easy to use.

AJAX is a development method for creating interactive web applications and can lead to more reactive browsing and contextual content. The prime examples are the multitude of flight fare aggregators that use AJAX to provide a fast user experience when sorting through flights without the browser reloading.

Implemented well and the enhanced user experience may well be a factor in a site visitor switching loyalty to a different travel company, however, it is important not to lose sight of the principles of usability design.