The iconic luxury brand, Orient Express, launched its first Stateside digital awareness campaign last week and Dusted were responsible for a key part of the development. Working alongside Chandelier Creative and Criterion Global in New York, Dusted built and integrated a microsite and various social media channels, featuring nine short films, which follow the travel experiences of an eclectic and engaging cast of fictional characters and real life staff members reside.

From the sparkling canals of Venice to the ‘Lost City’ of Machu Picchu, A Journey Like No Other, follows Duke, Lauren, Penelope and Max as they travel Orient-Express’ world of iconic hotels and unique experiences. This family journeys in style, seeking out adventure and enjoying their time together in their own individual ways.

Properties selected from within the diverse portfolio to showcase the Orient-Express hallmarks of authenticity and character are a romantic journey from Paris to Venice on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express train, a celebratory visit to Hotel Cipriani in Venice, a vacation at the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro, and a trip to Cuzco, Peru, to explore the delights of Hotel Monasterio, Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge, and the Hiram Bingham train.

The videos have been produced by Swedish film-maker, Kalle Gustafsson, who is renowned for the style and class he brings to his fashion photography and work with luxury brands. The Orient-Express films are artistically graded and set to commissioned music with voice over by renowned actor Bill Nighy.

Orient-Express is currently ranked first in its competitive set of 12 global luxury hospitality brands in the areas of service and emotional intelligence by Leading Quality Assurance. A proud association for Dusted.

Earlier this week, I was invited along to my local Jelly session show as their special podcast guest to chat about Dusted’s plans to branch out into the United States. For the past few years, ‘local’ for me has been Charlotte, North Carolina where Dusted is soon to open its first overseas office.

Recorded live from Mez at the Epicentre in uptown, I spoke with Josh McGlinn and Nathan Longbrook at CLTJelly about everything from English accents, European tastes, Atlantic exchange programmes and of course, how Dusted is looking to expand to Charlotte, why we chose the city, and our plans for the future.

Listen to the podcast here: JellyCast 5: British Invasion!

CLTJelly was started as a way to bring freelancers together in a casual setting to share ideas, collaborate, and co-work. Jelly sessions have been hosted all over the country and though originally intended for freelancers, CLTJelly is open to anyone who wants to participate. JellyCast is a recorded segment (think podcast) that takes place on location during CLTJelly.

Photo credit: Flickr user spyndle

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Offf festival in Lisbon, as a Dusted correspondent. The event, in its 8th edition, is one of the most exciting digital design festivals in Europe at the moment. It showcases top talents from web design to typography, motion graphics to installations, in a 3day marathon of talks, performances and workshops, lasting 10 hours each, uufff.

But despite the heterogeneous selection of people taking part, some common aspects of design as a practice became more apparent, such as the fragmentation in the communication landscape and the embrace of multiplatform deliverables by small studios, pretty much what Dusted has been doing.

It was interesting to see, for instance, various studios presenting solutions featuring similar approaches to on-line projects. Altogether, it almost delineates a new trend in interactive design where aesthetics teams up with functionality, generating incredibly edgy designs with a high level of intuitive navigability. There are different examples that share the same principle of creating more dynamic interface; the interactive visualization of the Radio Spectrum with contextualized artworks, as known as AES, along with the City Distances project that measures informational distances between cities, both designed by the ‘bestiario’ collective, where particularly interesting and it shows how the exploration of systems which translate heavy data into graphics can push the boundaries on interface design. Another good example is the work developed with PaperVision Xpress for the online news agency msnbc.com. It’s called Spectra, a news visualization tool that gives users an alternate way of navigating in a three dimensional real-time interactive viewing state, offering customization, dynamic browsing and human interaction.

But Offf is not made only of web and online. There was also some intriguing work quite difficult to classify (if there’s ever the need to) and fit into a single discipline. Among the plethora of projects shown I particularly liked the Sonik Wall. A sound reactive, real-time system presented in a form of a cube where people get instantly engaged with by speaking to or making any audible sound which is then translated, right away, in units of colour values that resemble a software swatch. Based on a similar concept there was also a live action installation by Minivegas. Here, sound is transformed in data through a complex system, which triggers lighting effects in digital landscapes. From stairs that play piano sounds as passers-by step on them through to reality emulators, it became clear that multidimensional experience is a tendency that will spread across any activity involving human perception, from cultural through to retailing and God know what more.

Another interesting aspect of the festival is how a subject such as design, interaction or whatever can actually work as a base for quite satirical presentations. That the subject is always associated with coolness and cutting-edge, no one question it but I have to confess I felt quite amused when attending the presentations of some of the panellists like KarlssonWilker, Joshua Davies and Fake Pilot, to name a few. The later, to begin with, walked to the stage with a fighter pilot helmet on, breathing and talking in the best ‘Darth Vaderesque’ way. Joshua in turn made his presentation look as a ‘Comedy Central’ show. Like a machine gun firing jokes, the web designer proved that design can, indeed, be a lot of fun not only to do but to be talked about too. Then, finaly, Hjalti Karlsson and Jan Wilker finalised by presenting their cases, one in particular very odd but no less funny, when they got commissioned by the Serbian Government to design a calendar celebrating the country and its culture. From a head-of-state style reception, right at the airport, through to funny interviews among other hilarious situations it was the closest one can get from being a rock star.

In short, it was a festival to get offf one’s head!