The Lungs of Good Design

It’s just as well Northen Kingdom are from Sweden, the home of IKEA. Handy for picking up a new awards cabinet every other day. One of the many great examples of work is the the Teamgeist. To create a buzz about the new German football team’s strip they create an interactive game. The look and feel of the film used would not look out of place in any Hollywood movie. We could blab on about them but best to let them tell us what they do. It’s quite inspiring:

“Storytelling is our trade. We provide unique interactive communication. Connecting brands with people. Creating emotional bonds and experiences that make people feel, reflect and discuss. We work methodically and are always excited about new ideas. When we work with you, we’re a focused and passionate team. From the wildest concepts to the finest details, passion, perfection and innovation are at the heart of everything we do. If you want to break boundaries with your project, working with us is a good start.”
And please, please, please check out their amazing showreel on Vimeo.

If you are around in Edinburgh at Hogmanay 09/10 then chances are that you will see a MINI dressed as a Highland Cow driving about the streets of Edinburgh. To promote Peter Vardy’s status as the Number one for used MINIs in Scotland Whitespace has created Scottish MINI – a loveable city MINI that has never seen the beautiful Scottish scenery so has decided to travel around Scotland and meet the population. The car was created by Inchmere Design who were the team behind the Innocent Smoothie grass Vans.

Checking out what it’s up to at:

http://www.scottishmini.com
http://www.twitter.com/scottishmini/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scottish-MINI/236207780927

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishmini/

Not often that we put up our own work but thought this job for Chang Beer was worth a wee mention. We have just launched a penalty shoot out competition for Everton fans to win a mascot experience for their children. It’s a pretty amazing prize as waiting list for the being the mascot are up to 5 years!

Poke recently redesigned the Man City website. It looks sweet but what of the other 19 teams? As the premiership season is now in full swing, who is the champions when it comes to football teams websites? And who will be fighting the design relegation battle? To be honest after reviewing all 20 there pretty much all the bloomin’ same.

01 Man City
The clear winner. The website has gelled well with lots of top superstar elements. Nice big images. Slick design, everywhere. Actually quite simple but has a perfect balance of images and text. Really interesting content including videos with highlights, flickr images, twitter feed and nice links to fan sites. Also the only site not to have a splash page.

02 Chelsea
At first glance this site seems to be like the rest but it features a nice section called ‘The Shed’ which host fan polls, twitter feeds, a rumour mill, etc. Not quite executed all that well but at least they’re trying something a bit different.

03 Sunderland
The north-east’s only representitive comes up trumps. Ok so it’s pretty standard in term of content but the design has got a nice sophisticated depth to it. And a nice interactive peice with the team profiles.

04 Portsmouth
Nicely designed. Breaks the mould for the standard layout of other team website. Has a nice depth to it. A little hard to read.

Portsmouth FC homepage

05 Hull City
Yet another splash page. There a theme running here. Maybe the worst splash page so far. Could even find my way off it. The website itself goes dark, which is pretty nice. Early contender for a champions league spot.

Hull FC homepage

06 Man Utd
The premiership champions are definitely the losers in the website stakes when compared to their city rivals. Quite boxy although the information is quite easy to digest. Not exactly the field of dreams.

07 Arsenal
Why do they need a splash page? I mean c’mon. Rest of it is pretty standard fair. Again quite boxy and nothing really that inspirational.

08 West ham
Standard layout as many of the rest but has got a little Italian style sleekness. Must be the Zola factor

09 Everton
There is a lot of content on the Everton site and whilst it is a little messy it has a lot to offer it’s fans. Also includes a really nice youth development site called The Everton Way.

10 Liverpool
Splash page alert. Annoying. The site is very crammed with info. Not sure where to look.

11 Tottenham
Another splash page. Grr! Another standard style website. Pretty easy to navigate.

12 Burnley
Punching above their weight both on field and on the website.

13 Wolves
I swear there is like one company that does all these website. They’re all the same.

14 Stoke
Standard mid-table mediocracy.

15 Wigan
Same as all the rest syndrome

16 Bolton
Same design as most of the other mid tablers. Although this one is a nice deep violet colour. Pretty!

17 Blackburn
Same design as most of the other mid tablers. Although this one is an ugly blue colour. Yuch!

18 Aston Villa
Splash page with a cheeky animation. Site itself is pretty flat.

19 Fulham
Info heavy. Not very exciting

20 Birmingham
Whoa. Shocking! Looks cheap. Everything is a really ugly blue colour

Today was the last day Johan, the official Whitespace helper outer, spent in the Whitespace studio. He is now off to Sweden to become a digital whizz! To mark his time here we created a virtual version of him. It won’t be the same but it’s prety funny. Good luck Johan!

Nice bit of flash in this site highlighting the plight of the people in Mozambique.

Amazing new flash website showing off the new cinema screen from Phillips. Similar to the Ikea advert a couple of years ago. Trying to dissect how they have done this. Making our head hurt!

We’ve been playing around a bit with Papervision here at Whitespace. Can’t quite decide if it’s really nice or a little unuser friendly. The potential is there!  Here is a nice example Gordon’s Gin. Although I prefer our own gin website that we are currently designing – Caorunn (designed, slightly ironically, by our designer Gordon).

Very satysfyingly complex but easy-to-use website featuring ‘statistical information on different aspects of human development’. Or the Human Development Reports. anyway look here