ideil. won the Red Dot Award 2024: behind the scenes

The Red Dot Award is the world’s most recognizable design competition, presented by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen. Established in 1955, the award annually apprises outstanding achievements in Product Design, Brands & Communication Design, and Design Concept. Winners receive the Red Dot Label — a mark of excellent design quality — and their works are displayed at the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen.

A bit of Ukrainian context

Ukraine was awarded with 138 Red Dots, including 101 in the Brands & Communication Design category since the competition`s first introduction. Previous winners include Ukrainian companies like MacPaw, Kultura, Fedoriv Agency, Grape, Taktika Agency, Banda Agency, and others.

misto.cafe is a social impact project aimed at developing our hometown, so sharing its story and gaining global recognition is highly appreciated.

How, why and what exactly

misto.cafe is about design, consistency, and teamwork. Our approach involved selecting the right technologies and tools, dividing the project into milestones where each team member knew their responsibilities and coordinated seamlessly — a perfect match and synergy!

We organised social media accounts, prepared them for a pre-launch, and then came the most exciting and my favourite step: to watch the applications roll in. Seventy-one days brought in 159 applications, including 23 on the first day!

The misto.cafe logo embodies the smiles of visitors attending events and the freshly prepared food or cup of aromatic coffee served. The logo is easily recognizable and what is important it connects well with the forms and shapes of Lutsk that inspire the branding. These shapes come directly from the city streets, forming the patterns we used for packaging, presentations, social media, and communications.

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I joined the project at the branding stage, and since the website had to serve as the primary sales funnel, I had a big responsibility. My goal was to create a bold design with intuitive storytelling, gamified elements, and an engaging UX — all while ensuring not to let the team down.

Inspired by the public’s positive reaction, I joined the crowdfunding campaign. It was pretty nice to use the tool I designed.

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For the misto.cafe website, we used Next.js, one of the most popular frameworks for React and used by major websites of companies like Apple, Netflix, Nike, TikTok, and Uber. This tool is perfect because it allows launching a site without a backend developer.

Our team chose a technology that could efficiently gather co-founders and showcase the café. This was the right decision, as the website is easily scalable as the project grows. I was no longer involved in the work on the misto.cafe website since it was a swift solution — and thank you for that! 🙃

Writing for a project with a significant social mission is both a dream and a challenge for a copywriter. Our goal was to explain complex ideas in a simple way, speak the same language as our audience, and inspire them. I believe we succeeded, gathering 100 co-founders committed to changing our city.

misto.cafe is a complex, multifunctional project about our city’s past, present, and future. We aimed to approach it as if we could foresee the future — our beautiful improved city and its people.

Through comprehensive work on branding, social media, website, content planning, messaging, and analytics, we created a new city trend from the very first moments.

A website isn’t just something to look at; it’s a 24/7 sales manager. For misto.cafe, the website became a magnet, attracting people who care about Lutsk to this social impact project.

Ultimately, we applied for the Red Dot because we wanted to draw additional attention to the misto.cafe project and share the experience of collaboration among active citizens in our city who came together to create this whole thing.

The Red Dot recognition will help us tell more about Lutsk, its local entrepreneurs, and the development of civil society in Ukraine.

What makes it even more emotional is that this is the first award of its kind for Lutsk.