Time for my latest update in the world of great graphic design.

This weeks entry looks at Alexandre Efimov, a Russian graphic designer who has a sample of work on Behance.

I really like his style, especially the unique use of colour in some of his pieces, a lot of graphic designers would not typically use this many vibrant colours together but we can see Alexandre pulls it off very nicely.

My favourite piece has to be his poster for Renova, its very sleek and attractive and instantly intrigues me about the project.

Here’s a few examples of his work;

isoCologne by Alexandre Efimov

Renova by Alexandre Efimov

What do you think? I looked for Alexandre’s own site but couldn’t find it, if you know where it is let me know, I would love to see it!

The guys from FI describe Kontain as;

“A free destination for users to media blog and share photos, videos and audio with friends, family, colleagues and even beautiful strangers. The core of each user’s experience is media-driven and Kontain takes the everyday concept of blogging to a wider audience by making it easy for users of all demographics to “kontain” and share their life online. Simple enough for Mom and Dad, yet flexible and sophisticated for a web veteran, Kontain aims to be the Internet’s premier destination for user-generated content.”

I was lucky enough to be one of the 10,000 accounts allowed in the alpha stage and have been playing around with it for about a week now. Kontain takes an old concept, blogging, and re-introduces it to a wider audience by focusing on ease of use and looks.

Now this isn’t a new idea. Six Apart is trying to accomplish it with Vox, Automattic with WordPress.com, and dozens of other startups have launched a wide range of other services. The focus of all of these platforms is to dumb things down to the point where users don’t need to think about anything from a technology point of view, but rather, can focus on putting content online in the quickest and easiest way possible.

To that end, Kontain does a brilliant job. From the signup process to its no-frills publishing tool, Kontain is incredibly easy to use. As the whole point of Kontain is to allow easy media sharing, the service also makes it simple to insert photos, videos, and audio. Rather than require the user to position multimedia elements within a post, they are added separately at the top of a post, through a simple built-in uploader.

I’m looking forward to the upcoming features that are due to be launched as well, with tools such as activity stats, HD video and High Def images, drag and drop media embedding (youtube) and inline editing – Kontain is raising the bar for the likes of Facebook and Myspace.

At the time of writing there are still some accounts waiting to be snapped up so sign up and take a look for yourself.

SAIZEN MEDIA STUDIOS is an internationally acclaimed and award winning Design Firm that specializes in highly cinematic and detail oriented imagery.

Well known in the industry, for its meticulous approach to graphics creation and attention to detail, Saizen Media Studios consits of a team of internationally acclaimed artists, engineers, programmers and animators, and provides services in the fields of Web Design, Graphic Design, Motion Graphics, Packaging and Music Production.

As expected with such a talented team, their own company website is truely a credit to their craft with attention to detail and creative use of flash animation, no matter how many times you look at the site you are guaranteed to see something you didn’t last time.

TVM Studio is a collaboration between Trevor Van Meter (hence the name) and his partner Ferg.

Between them they have a variety of sites including VanBeater, Jamungo, Pixelperson and my personal favorite… CrappyCat. This site includes a flash game of said CrappyCat which is completely pointless and utterly brilliant and I would highly recommend a walk around CrappyCats world!

The next in my list proves that single product information brochure sites most definitely don’t have to be dull, boring and text heavy. In 1993 11 milk processors in California agreed to allocate 3 cents of each gallon of milk sold to fund efforts to promote the consumption of milk and the GotMilk? brand was born. (I’m sure you all remember the ‘milk mustaches’ campaign – with over 200 celebrities representing the brand – In 2002, the ad was named one of the ten best commercials of all time by a USA Today poll)

In 2006 the the campaign diversified and began targeting the Spanish speaking demograph. Now the brand is back with not one but two interactive websites (one in english one in spanish) and the campaign to get nations drinking milk has begun once again.

I included my next selection to illustrate that, although good navigation is critical to a well designed website, breaking away from the industry standards doesn’t necessarily mean that the site will be inoperable. After a few seconds to get my head around the pencil/zoom function of the site I found that it was, in fact, quite easy to find my way around. Mind you I would expect no less from a 73 year old brand development agency that’s been responsible for campaigns such as Tony the Tiger, Pilsbury Dough Poppin Fresh and Earth Hour, and representing companies such as Kellogs, McDonalds and Levis.

Last but not least I have included the following site on recommendation from a colleague. With all of the DIY and DIC (do it cheap!) ecommerce websites floating around on the web nowerdays, it’s nice to come across a site that takes pride in the customer journey as well as the end result in making a sale. Although the loading times are understandably longer than a run of the mill ecommerce site, the graphics and functionality more than make up for the wait. Couple the smooth navigation and clean design with the vast amount of content (including learn to ride tutorials, news and events and even it’s own community!) Burtons is one of the most comprehensive ecommerce sites on the web today – and they redesign it EVERY year!!