Spearheaded by Simon Collison, the man behind colly.com, Erskine Design is a website design and development agency based out of Nottingham in the UK. Erskine Design is powered by Expression Engine (check out the EE review) and is an agency dedicated to web standards and accessibility, while maintaining quality design. For a lighter iteration of the design, check out the home of Erskine Corporation LLP, the parent company of Erskine Design.

Erskine’s website has completely valid CSS and XHTML 1.0 Strict. While validation seems to be taking more and more of a backseat in people’s approach to Web design, Erskine embraces it. Erskine’s website shows that you can maintain a balanced site, incorporating both Web standards and great design. That balance makes Erskine much more practical and user-friendly across platforms, browsers, and more. It doesn’t look half-bad, either.

The design itself is remarkably simple, but the the real killer with websites these days has been the details. The same goes for Erskine with those lovely illustrations (both the bird and the pencil-line borders) that add a sense of style to a design that’s focused on showcasing the content and work. The three column layout and use of those simple pencil drawings add just the right amount of flavor.