Your opinion on Artemiy Lebedev, leading Russian designer

crash_D.

Hi,, here, in the CIS (former USSR) (im in Ukraine), the most respected designer is ARtemiy Lebedev, author of the great Optimus keyboard and many other cool objects and sites... not only he is considered a great designer, but also a nastry critic of other's work.. in the russian version of his site artlebedev.ru there is a section called lynch where people submit their works on a daily basis for review, vast majority of which are severely put down and humiliated with cursewords... however, this unethical behaviour and haughty positioning creates even greater respect, and sort of worshipping around him, turning him into an idol of CIS design... now, i admit he truly is good.. some of the points in his mandership (or kovodstvo, a personal blog on design) are really great and relevant, the websites are revolutionary and neat, the industrial design is even more crazy (in a positive way), however, there are some points with which i disagree, on design, markup, and especially publich relations... why i write this here is i want to know your opinion about the person and his studio, take a look at his works and the website in general (worth taking look at), and tell me about your impression... be sure to check out websites and objects design in "everything" (the portfolio section)... the guy is great, i think, as a professional, but is intolerable as person (at least from the person who does not know him),, and 60% of the price he asks for his name or brand, while the rest is for the actual work... we needed to research webdesign companies, and his representative said that whatever work we order, we will surely pay 30 k euros minimum... even if i want 20 graphic templates, or a logo, or a small site... they only start work at 30k euro... this is too much, i think, and i would love to hear your opinions... ok, don't get me wrong, im not jealous nor i try to muzzle in someone's life, i just want to tell about the guy, and here is what i would ask you to do... i would really love to hear your opinion guys, couse i consider you, vanillers, a great community of experienced developers, designers, etc. Feel free to criticize his works or anything he does, only please provide clear statements as to why this part is bad or good,,, maybe i could translate this into russian later on, and post on the web, so that the populace stops worshipping Lebedev and realize that he is a good designer, not a godly one... EDIT: forgot to provide a link: http://www.artlebedev.com ANOTHER EDIT: note in the upper right corner of the site, in THE VERY CORNER, if you hover, the cursor: pointer (hand) appears, click on it...

angelic_venus

I have to say, that I do admire his design. I have gawped over the Optimus keyboard since inception, I haven't read too much into him or his group though. One thing I will say, is that I find the realisation of the Optimus keyboard a bit disappointing, for almost £800 (1564.37 US$) it isn't cheap.. and beyond that, the OLEDs only look good on the smaller keys, but they translate poorly onto the larger keys (such as the spacebar) where they do not fill the key, but merely provide a small OLED square in the middle. I do see the difficulties they faced, and understand that it is a complex piece of technology but it is a shame that it is so expensive.

Adam.

crash_D.

is that all? no more opinions?

WallPhone

I admire his work, but from your description of his personality, I wouldn't want to have him work for me. Although it helps, you don't necessarily need a celeberty designer to make a sucessful product or brand--the Coca-Cola logo was designed by the company's bookeeper. Das Keyboard is beautiful. It's too bad its way past both its original deadline and cost.