The new Guernsey Gas website design and developed by Betley Whitehorne has gone live. The site is packed with useful information and services for all gas uses whether residential or commercial, as well as those thinking about getting attached to the network. You can find the latest special offers and price tariffs or submit your metre reading via the site. The site also lets you help the environment with green tips on saving energy and information on the latest super efficient gas boilers and appliances. If you’re looking at updating your existing gas or electric appliances then browse through the The Energy Centre section and see Guernsey Gas’s wide selection on cookers, microwaves, televisions and lots more.

Betley Whitehorne have recently launched new creative work for leading Channel Island law firm, Ozannes.

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The 3G iPhone was unveiled yesterday at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Apple have addressed some of the issues with the original iPhone such as the battery life which is now comparable to other 3G phones on the market with 24 hours of audio and 5 hours of 3G talk time. It also comes with integrated GPS with Google Maps live tracking but best of all it’s less than half the price of the original iPhone starting from only $199 for the 8GB version and climbing to $399 for the new 32GB version.

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On 11 June 2008 Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands will open the Graphic Design Museum, Beyerd Breda, the first museum in the world to focus specifically on graphic design. This institution will serve as a museum, knowledge centre, learning environment, visual culture boutique, design café and production company. The Graphic Design Museum will provide an international podium for established designers and a showcase for new world-class talent. The opening exhibitions include: 100 Years of Graphic Design in the Netherlands; Go Ahead and Publish!; European Championship of Graphic Design.

www.graphicdesignmuseum.nl

Swedish furniture design company Front have developed a technique for producing unique pieces of furniture from sketches drawn in air. The technology they have developed translates freehand sketches drawn in a space into 3D furniture using laser setting technology.

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I have recently seen a very wonderful music video from the band Justice. Directed, illustrated and animated by French designer So Me. The video follows two people walking through halls with animated t-shirts. The second video was a viewing recommendation from fellow Betley blogger Ash. The band is Sh*tdisco with their song Ok. The majority of the video is done using a pop-up book containing pictures of the band playing and singing, it is a great video. It uses a idea which I’m sure every young designer has been tempted to use for a project, but they execute it really well.

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Online news portal MSNBC recently launched Spectra Visual News Reader; an interesting and fun way to explore the latest news headlines. The simple interface lets you choose the news categories you’re interested in and then displays them in three dimensions.

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An interesting, if slightly bizarre concept, the Literary Doener Kebab lets you explore German book publisher Reclam’s catalogue in an easily digestible manner.

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Isn’t it about time that something was done about the Google logo? My apologies to Ruth Kedar, but I think it’s a shocking piece of design. Ruth may have won several design awards and worked as a consultant art professor but that doesn’t mean that everything she produces is a work of art.

Google is one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world and yet the logo looks like it was created by a 10 year old. It’s not just the primary colour palette which offends me, however it is slightly improved when reversed out, such as in iGoogle. But for me it will take more than well designed backgrounds (or poorly as the case may be) to make the Google logo worthy of any awards.

Of course it’s recognisable around the world but I doubt very much that Google’s success has anything to do with the design of it’s logo. I know many of us are subjected to looking at this logo everyday, so please Google, consider a re-design, rather than erasing us from your search engine for writing this article!

It’s that time of year again - today is May 1^st Reboot when a host of websites around the world are relaunched (rebooted). The 2008 Reboot site comes in a rather scary shade of pink that I’m not too sure about. However you can be sure there’ll be a whole host of exciting and innovative websites on display. The winners are announced on June 1^st so be sure to check back then. Once again I’ve managed to totally miss rebooting my site, maybe next year…

Visit the May 1^st Reboot.