2021

Travelling is great. I love to meet new cultures of different countries. Each of them is unique. There are differences between not only countries but cities of one country. South Thailand is not North Thailand. Cape Town is not near Hermanus. Rio de Janeiro is not Sao Paulo. Lake Baikal is in my list to visit. This is the deepest lake on Earth. And when I had the opportunity to dive into this theme I was very excited.

Guides have been organising touristic routes on Lake Baikal for 15 years, writing blog and telling tourists about their work and showing new routes. But these online-journals were a hobby. Team wanted to make one professional blog about Lake Baikal and also present their services on the Internet. It had to be a site with tour services and a blog for tourists with all information and specific situations for Lake Baikal.

Travelling is great. I love to meet new cultures of different countries. Each of them is unique. There are differences between not only countries but cities of one country. South Thailand is not North Thailand. Cape Town is not near Hermanus. Rio de Janeiro is not Sao Paulo. Lake Baikal is in my list to visit. This is the deepest lake on Earth. And when I had the opportunity to dive into this theme I was very excited.

Guides has been organising touristic routes on Lake Baikal for 15 years, writing blog and telling tourists about their work and showed new routes. But this online-journals were a hobby. Team wanted to make one professional blog about Lake Baikal and also presented their services on the internet. It had to be a site with tour services and a blog for tourists with all information and specific situations Lake Baikal.

There is a lot of noise from poorly qualified companies and guides on Lake Baikal tours market. That is why this tour may look disappointing from time to time. We have to avoid feelings of service-just-for-money. 1642 team is about people, who really love their work, love the place where they live and inspire others.

To help to organise a tour to Lake Baikal which gives a lot of positive emotions. To tell about Lake Baikal to evoke interest to this tourism way and desire to visit it. To form a connection with professional guides who can resolve any problem and clearly introduce what their tours include.

To achieve these goals we develop a website with different, amazing, unique tours and merge it with a blog about guide's work.

A tour to Lake Baikal is a considered purchase, a weighed decision which includes a search and options comparison. That is why the website should form the feeling of a reliable resource, interesting variety of programs and friendly staff.

We have to show a customer professional guide with extensive work experience and special education, who lives near Lake Baikal and has proficiency knowledge of the area and local people. Our guides are always prepared for emergency situations if they happen.

The target audience — young and middle-aged people. Active and ready for long walking and nights in tents. They do not want just photos for instagram but new emotions from new places which inspire.

Your product message should resonate with the values of your potential customers. The stronger this resonance is, the more successful the product will be. That is why it is so important to understand your customers.

Our target group was determined as people of 30—40 years old, active, mobile and energetic. They are prepared for hiking, ice skating and possibly staying in tents during the night (it depends on tour programme) to see amazing sunrise. They don't want just photos for instagram, they yearn for new experiences and emotions from natural places.

The guides are professonals. They love to share their knowledge. The main idea is to write about Lake Baikal and than offer the tours. Interest is the first thing. A lot of texts, facts and photos define the magazine's grid. Easy to read and to feel atmosphere through the images. Pixel-Perfect-Grid.

Site was planned to launch in 4 languages: Russian, English, German and French. Therefore, it was important to choose a font that included all ligatures and diacritics of the selected alphabets. Raleway suited us. It is an elegant sans-serif typeface family with open sign's forms that is perfect for big articles in blog. The font was designed by Matt McInerney and was expanded into a 9 weight family by Pablo Impallari and Rodrigo Fuenzalida in 2012.

For the winter season, we chose blue as the main colour, of course. Dark and saturated. It is associated with depth and infinity. Great for visually describing the deepest lake in the world. The second colour is turquoise. It's brighter and sets a friendly mood, which correlates with a young audience. The main content components are photos and text. Therefore, two colours were great enough.

There is search for content by tags. When a user chooses a tour by date he can get not only exactly relevant tours but tours with closer date (this date highlights in description for fast search).

The first idea on how to present the lake’s age was to place it on a timeline and compare it with other lakes. But it was quite plain. I added visual display of a volume as a triangle: horizontal line if a lake’s surface area, vertical is a depth. Also lakes were placed by altitude.

However, we refused this idea. Just 3 lakes weren't enought and we wanted to add more lakes to compare but we had small block size and the scale could be too small.

That is why we decided to save this infographic for the history article about Lake Baikal and do something different. Something different was the first idea: to compare the lake's age but with human's. A mammoth was added as a recognizable image of ancient times.

By the way, did you know that the first proboscideans are dated 60 million years ago. I didn't :) The Elephantidae family appeared about 7 million years ago, and Mammoths formed from them after 2 million years just before the first humans.

For safe walking ice thickness must be more than 10 cm. When ice thickness is 30 cm there you can drive a car on it. In some places ice thickness on Lake Baikal can be even 2 metres.

But. The lake fills water with oxygen for live creatures. It is called "the lake breathes". Because of that there are ice cracks. Sometimes for 30 km long. Ice cracks are needed but they are dangerous natural phenomena for travellers. That is why you must walk on Lake Baikal ice only with a professional guide.

404 page is a good opportunity not only to help lost users to navigate but to inform about this life saving information once again.