Promodo.ua commissioned the new website in autumn 2014. The agency specializes in internet marketing and search engine promotion, so its homepage was not a business card but a showcase of its own expertise. The work was not easy: while it was underway, the Kyiv office of the studio went through two directors.
A crash test implies that experts look at the finished product without allowances for circumstances. AIN.UA assembled four specialists from different parts of the internet market. Dmitry Fedorenko works at Studio7, Anton Karpenko from Happy Farm, Sergey Dovgopoly is associated with FeelGoodLabs and Next.Step. The fourth was Mas, and he turned out to be the toughest.
Logo, signature and mobile traffic
The first remark concerned the site's header. The client's logo was reduced by half, while Lebedev's signature remained the same size. For an agency that earns from brand recognition, such an imbalance on the first screen is immediately noticeable, and the expert did not soften it.
The second remark concerned adaptability. Responsive layout adjusts a page to the screen of any device, from monitor to phone. The Promodo site was not like that, and Mas explained this by his own habit: 'I read from mobile more than from the web.' By 2015, such an argument already described the behavior of an audience that increasingly opened sites from smartphones, not the personal taste of the critic.
The third remark was the most biting. In the description of works there was 'lorem ipsum,' that is, placeholder text that designers use to fill layouts before real content appears. But the captions referred to other people's photographs of real people, and that is hard to dismiss as a draft. For a studio that sells its name and taste, this looks like an oversight at the final stage.
The verdict that was remembered
Mas formulated the final conclusion without diplomacy. He linked the assessment not only to one site but also to the studio's lag behind the market:
'Lebedev and his studio got lost in website building somewhere five to seven years ago'
The article ended with the rating 'B plus.' For a magazine accustomed to big names, this is a rare case when a critic from the internet industry speaks of a design master in the language of a school grade, and at the same time stays within the bounds of specific remarks.
Mas himself was a man whose surname in the Ukrainian internet stood next to concrete projects. Together with Ruslan Dmitrakovich, he launched the Ukrainian Banner Network in January 1999: the first version took three weeks of work in Perl and about $100 in expenses. In March 2000, he headed the 'Ukrainian Portal' (UAPortal). Infostore in December 2004 worked as a site of people's news, and Mail.ua, of which he was the architect, passed to Mail.ru Group in 2012. The purchase was confirmed by the group's vice president Anna Artamonova.
What happened next
In 2015, Mas continued to work on industry platforms. The seventh iForum, which he prepared together with co-organizer Alexander Olshansky, took place on April 16. In spring of the same year, Mas gave a long interview to 'Computer Review,' and in 2016 he became an advisor to Kyivstar on digital technologies.
On October 6, 2021, Oleksii Mas died in Kyiv at the age of 47 after an illness. His death was reported on October 8 by his brother Viktor Mas.
2
