Design Exploration

Stunning photography and photo illustrations, sophisticated thematic design and ease-of-use combine to impress users navigating the vacation resort site, http://www.biminibayliving.com.

From the first second after we hit the Enter Site button, we know we are in for a treat: Flying through blue skies and fluffy clouds, we then swoop down to the island of Bimini (in the Bahamas) and land gently on a white-sand beach.

Here, the subtle sounds of ocean waves, the occasional golf ball plunking in a hole and a slow-paced jazz-influenced "Bahamian Lullaby" inspire the user to learn more.

Clicking on the navigation bar (notice its placement; it's deliberately lower to showcase the resort's beautiful imagery), we view atypical submenus containing video snippets of the resort. Once we click on any of the menu items, a slide show appears along with a semi-transparent info box and minimalist-looking scroll bar.

Perhaps the most inviting of the menus is the Gallery and its slide show highlighting the island and the resort, a truly (vicarious) pleasure. The slide show is placed asymmetrically to focus attention and every photo is a glossy postcard of this vacation paradise.

To capture the island's fishing frontier outpost image, the luxurious prints are contrasted with the scratchy/cross-hatch filters on the navigation bar and on background photo edges. Bimini is Hemingway country, after all, and the author's laid-back life there often included snorkeling, trolling for game fish and sharing a few rums with the locals.

Winner of a 2009 Web Marketing Association award for Outstanding Achievement in Web Development, http://www.biminibayliving.com/ was designed by EuroArt93 (http://www.euroart93.hr), a Croatian Web development and design agency. Three people from the firm are credited with the award: a creative director/designer, a producer and an animator.

From both a design and marketing standpoint, this trio left no sand pebble unturned, right down to the requisite Contact Form and FAQs. Every image boasts blue, green and gold shades and opacity in the aforementioned info boxes is applied judiciously. Typography is simple and clean. The only (albeit technically impossible) treatment missing from the site is the scent of salt air and coconuts.