Most Appreciated Projects on Behance

Appreciations are a way to send genuine kudos to another creative professional on Behance. This is our community’s way of curating the network, so that the best projects gain the most exposure. Here’s a look at two of the most appreciated projects on Behance this week:

No Entry Design is a Brooklyn-based, multi-disciplinary designer with specialty in hand-painted signs and custom murals. A recent project involved both with a facelift to a local cafe’s facade. Check out the custom mural and hand-painted signage here.

The “Weird Beauty” project is a collaboration between photographer Alexander Khokhlov and makeup artist Valeriya Kutsan. This series, one that Khokhlov refers to as an “experiment,” sets out to prove that simple shapes and forms, characters and familiar patterns can be part of beauty. Check out the full project here.

Meet the team: Sean Blanda

Who are you and what do you do at Behance?
 I’m Sean, the Associate Editor and Producer of 99U.Basically: I handle all the day-to-day work of running a blog with an audience of a million creatives. Stuff like finding guest writers, editing posts, writing posts, determining article topics/themes and brainstorming long-term growth strategy with EIC Jocelyn Glei. We hope to provide our readers with all of the stuff they need to execute on ideas. I’m constantly testing and tweaking to discover what resonates with our readership. Additionally, I play a role in helping to organize the 99U conference and a few other super-secret events we have up our sleeve.

What are three desktop tools you can’t live without?

1) Evernote – I’m a new convert to the church of Evernote but I use it, without exaggeration, every 10 minutes. For someone like me with a terrible memory, it’s a life saver.
2) Spotify – If it weren’t for Spotify I’d be listening to the same four Black Keys albums. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
3) Twitter - It’s how I reach out to writers, promote our work, get exposed to new ideas, and complain about the Philadelphia Eagles.

What have you worked on recently that you’re extra proud of?
I’m only 6 weeks on the job, but I’m proud that we’ve had the highest trafficked day in 2012 this month. I’m also proud to see the comments and tweets from readers who use the content to make their lives better. The best is yet to come.

What are some startups that you’re a fan of?
In a past life, I covered startups and venture capital so I’m a big fan of ambitious businesses that affect the general population and not just other tech-savvy startup people. My favorite of the moment are Uber (car service), Frank and Oak (men’s clothes), Lore (education), Circa (journalism), and Duck Duck Go (search). Also: anything Elon Muskis involved with. America needs more ambitious startups.

Name something you’ve learned since joining the Behance team that you weren’t expecting:
“Attention to detail” is usually some throwaway phrase on job descriptions. But here, I’m learning from the care that everyone takes in their day-to-day. I’ve seen (and taken part in) discussions about tiny details like the kerning on a site’s footer or the perfect copy to use in an article teaser. Whether it’s the new project editor on Behance, a partnership with a sponsor, an article on 99U, or some print collateral – everything is well considered, well designed and well executed. And that’s just been in the six weeks since I’ve started. I’m excited to see what happens next.

You can find Sean on twitter: @SeanBlanda. 

Portfolio Review Week Countdown

We are only days away from Behance’s global Portfolio Review Week!  Our meet-up organizers are receiving their kits in the mail and are making final arrangements for their events. It’s not look late to claim a spot in your area and RSVP to attend. To learn more about Behance Portfolio Reviews please visit be.net/reviews.

Behance Ambassadors – Creative News From Around the Globe

The Behance Ambassadors are a group of 15 who represent Behance in the real-world, helping to create local movements in their cities and provide real-world connections for creative professionals. They curate & promote stellar work coming out of their area, host & suggest local events, and help creative vibrant pockets of creative activity. Here’s what they’ve been up to:

Portugal:
Ambassador Rui Pedro Esteves just launched Behance Portugal! This site is the new hub for the creative community in Portugal, and contains info on upcoming events, inspiring creative work, interviews, and workshops.
Introducing Behance Portugal: http://www.behancept.com/

Argentina:
RSVP For Buenos Aire’s Portfolio Review Night
The official Portfolio Review evevent will happen on October 30 at the Universidad de Palmero, featuring presentations from 5 Behancers, plus special guest Hernan Berdichevsky, Director at imagenHB and Nobrand.

Congratulations to local photographer Lui Abadi, who showed his work at NYC’s MOMA PS1! Learn more about his work, “Casa de Cambio,” at the NYArtBookFair. In other creative news, Paola Dalman, your Ambassador, recommends joining the Buenos Aires Freelancer Community, or attending the IV International Designer Festival, going on from October 19-21.

Malaysia:
An exhibition featuring the work of local talent is in the works for November 28-December 8th as a part of “Behance Portfolio Review Week.” (invitation to come). Our Ambassador Muid Latif has been busy – he hosted a gathering for the Behance Community on October 7, and, as part of his duties as  board member of Creative Commons Malaysia, is speaking on creative copyright laws this month.

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⌘ Developer’s Toolkit: Kevin Ran

This post is part of a series where Behance developers talk about the various tools they use to get things done and make ideas happen.

1. Who are you, and what do you do at Behance?

I’m Kevin and like a few others on the Dev team, SUNY Binghamton is my Alma Mater. Personally, I play guitar, [lots of] video games and animate things once in a while. I’m also an avid C/C++ programmer. Overall, a very simple guy (despite the C/C++ part).

At Behance I’m a full time QA Engineer. It’s been a lot of manual testing of new features, automated testing and maintaining the framework that we use for those tests – our page objects. I focus a lot on enforcing a clear, maintainable pattern in our page objects, not just for ease of use (by me, Dan and potentially other devs), but for extensibility. It’s thrilling because I get the unique opportunity to focus on how efficient my code is and how to utilize and combine language features in nifty ways!
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Announcing Pantone Canvas

Behance powers custom networks for creative organizations like the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, Adweek, Vice/Intel and more.

We’re thrilled to announce our newest custom network for Pantone, the world-renowned authority on color.

On PANTONE CANVAS you can share your creative work and see the portfolios of today’s top designers and creatives from around the world. Browse by category, style – even search for designs in your favorite color! Click here to browse or join Pantone Canvas.

Most Appreciated Projects on Behance: National Design Awards Edition

Appreciations are a way to send genuine kudos to another creative professional on Behance. This is our community’s way of curating the network, so that the best projects gain the most exposure. Here’s a look at two of the most appreciated projects from our recently launched National Design Awards gallery:

New York-based design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro integrates architecture with visual and performing arts. In collaboration with James Corner Field Operations and Piet Oudolf, DS+R designed the 1.5-mile long public park known as the Highline. Built on an abandoned, elevated railroad the Highline runs from Manhattan’s Meatpacking district through to the Hudson Rail Yards. See the full project here.

Global design studio, MINIMAL, best known for their iconic, disruptive products put their detail-oriented approach to work in creating a high tech case that transforms your iPhone into a “rugged everyday warrior.” Check out the full projects for close-ups of the Gorilla glass lens, aluminum cover and even witness a Taktik-protected iPhone getting dropped over and over (and surviving) here.

A Closer Look with Jani Leino

We were excited to get the opportunity to interview Jani Leino, a designer from Finland who specializes in interior & furniture design and has some great insight on innovation and collaboration. 

Do your personal projects differ from your professional work? If yes, how so?
A lot. At least it used to be true. I have worked in furniture design, children’s playground equipment design and in concept design doing various projects in different fields. That has really helped me experience a lot of things from different points of view. But for a while I felt too tied down. That has prevented me from doing some things that have been really close to my heart or prevented me from learning and developing my skills in new areas. I have really enjoyed working in all my jobs, but I wanted more. I wanted to combine all my skills and search for my true passion. When photography and sculpting came along in my life I started to see more clearly what I really wanted to do for living. I wanted to bring those things that I found important in my personal projects to my work projects. Little by little everything clicked together and I ended up founding a company with a couple of my friends that I met during my Design Management studies. When you combine such fields as av-production, design and education, Jam Jam Creatives ltd started to look really interesting. So I am really excited about my future and the road that lies ahead.

What do you think are the most important elements to focus on, when creating a personal website?
When I’m creating a website I try to make use of the visual elements as best as I can. Basically I think that a picture is worth a thousand words. So when you keep it simple and focus on visual aspects, you can allow the viewer to breathe and think more about the content. Keep it simple, fresh, readable & visually high. And that reminds me that I have to update my prosite with some new projects soon.

What is your daily routine?
I don’t think that I have a certain routine in my daily life. The projects that I work on vary so much that you never know what the day brings. One day you can be working on the typography of a new TV-show and tomorrow you are doing preliminary plans for a new education course and the day after that you are creating marketing materials for a newly founded company while designing them a new office. What I find is the most important part of the day are the long, creative conversations with your workmates. Sharing your problems and challenges helps you notice solutions that you couldn’t even think about. Usually we start the day and new project with a free discussion session where we freely pitch different ideas to each other. Those sessions usually create the most bizarre ideas and sometimes we just can’t stop laughing. Then we collect the best ideas together and start to create rough concept sketches about them. We try different solutions and if possible, we always try to approach the problem from a fresh point of view. When we have enough sketches about the ideas we take a break and discuss again about the solutions. We want to create new solutions to problems instead of taking the short cut with the foregone conclusion. We select the best one or combine the best ideas to one solution which we start to push forward. Sometimes all the pieces click together in a day, sometimes it takes a lot longer.

What inspires you and keeps you motivated?
I have been truly blessed by having so many creative and innovative people around me so I have to answer that I’m motivated and inspired by the people around me, never ending curiosity towards new things and people who push their limits to the max.

What creative project you’ve worked on are you most proud of?
I really can’t point one project out, there have been so many of them. But if I’m forced to pick one, I guess I would choose the ones that have helped me to break free from my limitations and the ones that have taught me new things that I wasn’t aware of. Those things help me to feel proud of myself and my work and they also motivate me to push my skills everyday. One particular project like that would be the concept design for Café Oma, while designing the building with help of the blueprints made in ca. 1920. It really improved my blueprint reading skills!

What are some projects you hope to work on in the future?
Oh my gosh, I would like to do so many things. But I think the most interesting thing would be a work assignment to a client who isn’t afraid to try something new. The assignment could be something like interior designs for a company with own unique products or new office design for Google or Red Bull. They have truly amazing offices. When going through the internet you bump into really creative people, it’s so amazing how creative people can be. You find great examples from websites like Behance, Thisaintnodisco.com or White Spaces. If I could have a chance to do something like that I would be so thrilled!

To see more of Jani’s work or to get in touch, click here

Behind the Project: Water Wigs!

In this series, we’ll look deeper into some of the projects on Behance.net that were especially admired in our community. This time, we spoke with Tim Tadder, a photographer and visual communicator in Los Angeles. His epic Water Wigs project got a staggering 740,000 views, was featured on Reddit, and practically became a meme in the 2 months since it’s been posted. We must admit, we’ve been dying to know how these were accomplished – Tadder divulges his inspiration and process below. 

What was your inspiration for this project?
I had seen the show Time Warp (a slow-motion piece showing a water balloon hitting face) – and thought we could do a similar thing with photography. I wanted to do it with portraits – as you will see from Time Warp, they’re throwing water at a face, which was something I really didn’t want to do.  Also, I had seen a project on Behance where someone had thrown a balloon at a person’s face, and it didn’t have the jump I was looking for.

I wanted to create a still face amidst this explosion of energy. We then began exploring the idea with a mannequin in our studio, and found that when we threw the balloons straight down, it created a hair-like effect. We then figured bald men would make the perfect subjects to really show the effect of the water and the wig/hat like shapes really created an arresting comical image.

Can you describe your process in creating this project?
This is pretty intense, and I do not recommend it to people that are not experienced working with water and electricity! We had to use lots of power to freeze the water, and there was quite a bit of mess. I’d rather skip the details and just say I learned about how to do it online from people shooting exploding balloons, I then modified it to shoot people. It just expanded the scale and the size of the mess.

Did you expect it to be as popular as it’s been on Behance?
Not at all. We have been doing lots of personal projects this year to expand our offering and break out of a style we are know for. We did the future sports project, the Fish Heads, a boxing project, (some others that were epic fails) and then this project. Each one seemed to be better than the previous execution. I think with this one its really something totally different.

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