Our latest project, the Blood Diamond Action website, has just gone live. The website publicises the issues surrounding the film Blood Diamond that stars Leonardo diCaprio amongst others. Working again with Provokateur, the site is backed by Amnesty International USA and Global Witness.

The build of the site was fine. However, our problem was determining the potential traffic to the site. The film will be launched in the US in December and the UK early next year. This will raise the profile of the issue greatly and with it the profile of the site. The potential number of visitors to the site globally could be quite large.

It’s always great to have lots of visitors to a website. But it is, of course, not as simple as that. The website is designed for broadband and includes a 9MB video download. The main Flash-based element is approximately 190k. While these are not enormous files, a large number of global visitors could cause it problems. Even if the majority of visitors don’t download the video, the required bandwidth could become very costly and a surge in visitor numbers could even bring it down.

Our solution to this was to move all the key files to Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage Service), part of Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services use infrastructure that Amazon has already set up for their own products, and are now offering to other companies. Therefore, not only are we tapping into a very reliable system that one of the largest web companies in the world is using, it is also easy to use, very cheap and you only pay for what is used. So if a large number of people visit the site or the expected visitors don’t arrive, it won’t be a problem.

Update: The website is featured in an article in today’s LA Times (16th November 2006).

This article was edited, and moved to another post.

The Spurt campaign, which we built the website for, is Pick of the Month in November’s Creative Review magazine, the world’s leading monthly magazine for visual communication. Working with Provokateur, the website backed up a press ad alerting readers to a spoof pro-aviation growth organisation, Spurt. Featuring bogus airline big-wig Sir Montgomery Cecil, the ad urged readers to ignore the tree hugging lobby with the motto “Sod them. Let’s fly”. Only when readers visit the site is it revealed that the ad was organised by a coalition of environmentalist groups including Enoughsenough.org, Airportwatch and Greenpeace.

Take a look at the Unlimited Spurt website we built, a satirical website aimed at the worst excesses of the aviation industry, backed-up by a national UK newspaper campaign. Working with Provokateur, the campaign is being supported by Greenpeace, Airportwatch and EnoughsEnough.org.

Update: Take a look at the Daily Mirror article, an article in The Times, the Digg article and the comments on YouTube.

The new Olivant site has launched today, with help from Wolff Olins. Olivant is a financial services business created by Luqman Arnold (previously CEO of Abbey) and Alan Morgan.

Coochi, is a new start-up “inspired by [their] own experiences of first time parenthood”. Their primary product is the Coocoose, a wearable baby bath towel. FoxLand worked on the high-level online branding. Take a look at the website at coochico.com.

Spy, a design and brand team, have launched their new website with us, with a new look and content management system.

We have now moved into our new Hampstead, London offices at 5 Rosslyn Mews, London NW3 1NN. Take a look at Contact Us for more.

This website is currently under development, but will be launching officially soon. In the meantime, please take a look at our About us and Our work pages. You can also contact us on info@fox-land.co.uk.

Take a look at olivant.com where a new holding page has gone up in preparation for a re-branding of the company and website.

As we set up our office in Hampstead, we are buying our equipment. Macbook Pros and Mac Pros are on the shopping list, but while we love the idea of having matching Apple Cinema Displays, it is sadly tricky to justify their price. So, we ask ourselves, why are there are no other truly beautiful computer displays out there?

Take a look at our new, just launched site for Olly Blackburn, film-maker and screenwriter. Olly is a real enthusiast on film, zombies, arcana and octopuses… as you will see: ollyblackburn.com.

Take a look at the soft-launched NHS Alchemy site, built in conjunction with Zebra Crossing and aimed at drawing 13-18 years olds into careers at the NHS.