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:


Parisian photographer Leo Caillard, wanted to bring war into everyday life, so he digitally altered photos of popular regions in Paris to include iconic military vehicles. His politically-charged projects is one of this week’s most appreciated, take a look.


Milan-based illustrator Alessandro Gottardo‘s recent public exhibition puts traditional billboards to shame. His project titled “Affiche – No/where Now/here; Cremona” tells a visual story that’s both whimsical and beautiful. Check it out.

How do I find a great designer on Behance?

We hear stories of top companies like Apple, Netflix, and tech startups hiring talent they’ve found on Behance everyday. But how do they discover the right talent in the first place? Here are the top three things they’re doing:

1) Search for the right things with our discovery tools
We offer robust tools found in the “discovery” tab with ways to search, sort, and filter that will help you find your ideal designer.

  • Start with the subject matter: use Tags (like iPad, iPhone), search by Field (like “Interaction Design”), Tools Used, or School Attended (found in the Advanced Search).
  • Then, Filter by Location for a list of design specialists based in your area


2) Leverage Top Creatives As Curators
The smartest recruiters/companies are “following” top creatives/designers that they like. By doing this, you not only get to see the latest work from these designers, but you also see every single project that they appreciate, comment on, or add to a collection. Since there are millions of projects on Behance, you’re essentially using the top designers as your curator to find top talent. This is the BEST way of identifying top talent in specific fields… just get the experts to do it for you!

Read more →

Behind the Project: Visualizing Motion in Air

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 Mike Campau, a Digital Artist & Creative Director in Michigan. He’s done everything from create compelling Celebrity Portraits to intense CGi work (like in “The Future Of Sports”) – but this time, we talked to him about his visualizations of dancers’ movements in “Motion in Air.“

What was your inspiration for this project?
I just had an idea of capturing people in mid-air, but wasn’t quite sure in what scenario I would do this. So, I started my usual process of image searching, browsing stock sites and going through my own catalog of images, when I stumbled upon some very nice studio shots of dancers leaping. That was it, I had my subject matter. I tried to envision the motion that the dancer made before and after that moment in air and thought, “how could I visually create that as an object?”. From this point, I now had my inspiration moving forward.

Can you describe your process in creating this project?
Now that I had my subject matter, I started to scour through stock photo sites looking for as many dancers in mid air as possible. Once I did this, I narrowed it down to ones whose lighting style would fit in with what I was envisioning. Having some knowledge of dance from my daughters taking studio lessons and performances, I had a pretty good understanding of the types of movements the different styles the dancers create while performing. From here I had to visually create a sculpture in 3d that best represented these movements. There was some trial and error, along with completely starting over in some cases until I got the right feel and shape.

Did you expect it to be as popular as it’s been on The Behance Network?
Yes, and no. I knew I had created something that I was very proud of and had an instant appeal once I was done, but I had no idea so many people would gravitate to these images and fall in love with them the way I did.

Did you go through many versions and iterations before coming up with these final pieces?
Yes, some of the images took more variations than others, while a couple of them I nailed on the first try – and probably the most popular one (blue cover image) was one of those that just worked instantly.

Did anything interesting happen as a result of the success of this project?  (fans contacting you, job opportunities, blogs picking it up, etc).
Yes, I received a ton of great responses and posts from this series and I was also contacted by a few clients to use the images for magazine covers and an annual report.  It also helped me indirectly, leading some potential clients to my other work and website, which in turn generated other work.

Do you feel that this project is “done,” or is there anything you’d like to improve on or change in the future?
For me, no project is ever “done” but this one is pretty close. There isn’t too much I would change or do differently, other than some small tweaks here and there. As far as the series is concern, I am not sure if I will go back to it to add more or just leave it as a series and move on to my next concept? Read more →

ProSite Spotlight: Portfolios with Personality

In addition to displaying your work, we believe your online portfolio should tell your story. With all the customization options available on ProSite, the possibilities for personalizing your site – from your landing page to your project covers – are endless. Here are a few examples of ProSites with personality:

JP Leroux is a copywriter, strategist, ponderer, “wordventor,” word-flipper, etch-a-sketcher and he even juggles. In addition to text-focused project covers, Leroux manages to convey his many talents in a simple, but personable animated logo.

The Fox and King is the working burrow of Glenn Thomas, an Australian Illustrator and Animator. Thomas injects a little bit of personality into each element of his site, including his animated .Gif logo of an illustrated fox and king strolling side-by-side.

Eric F. Thomas is an award-winning designer and creative director who has been designing and leading for over 12 years. Using a portrait of himself as a custom logo on his ProSite helps add a personal touch to his site, and reiterates his emphasis on building brands through real connections.

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:


Boston Magazine hired graphic designer Jordan Metcalf to create a toolkit for their 2012 ‘Best of Boston’ issue. His project, which includes a lockup for the table of contents and various headers, is one of this week’s most appreciated works. Check out the full series here.


“Childhood’s End,” a series of illustrated characters and their fantastical settings, is another of our most appreciated projects this week. We love that the artist, Dric, included shots of the works in a gallery setting as well. See the project here.

Curators Conference

Curation and Creativity meet modern culture at the upcoming “Curators Conference” in NYC. We spotted this day-long event, featuring presentations of leading curators and creative professionals in fashion, film, design, and tech – and recommend it to anyone looking to dig into curation in their field – from the nitty gritty to the inspirational.

The conference, debuting during NYC Fashion Week, features presentations, ideas and conversations of thought leaders in their fields. Speakers so far include Gia Coppola (Filmmaker), Philippe von Borries (Refinery29), Susie Bubble (Fashion Icon) and many more.

Details:
September 5, 2012 
Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center
Get tickets here! 

⌘ Distributed Logging – Managing 7 Production Apps across 200+ Servers with Gearman

History

 

Be DLA - Log View

Behance Distributed Logging Application - Log View

What do you do when there is an error across 7 different web applications running in production and load balanced across roughly 200+ servers? Good luck logging into each and grepping some logs. No, crying won’t help; we tried that. Instead, why not build a tool to log all of those errors into a centralized location? After evaluating the many (fantastic) pre-built options like: Loggly, Splunk, even Syslog… we found none of them provided all the capabilities we wanted. The job to build our own solution was then tasked to Matt LeBrun and me, and here is our awesome journey.

Read more →

From 99U: How Goals and Good Intentions Can Hold Us Back

99U is Behance’s education arm, where we share tips & insights on making ideas happen. Through a web magazine, bestselling book and annual conference, we share best practices from the world’s most productive creative people. 

Join a gym and one of the first things the instructor does is talk about your goals – what exactly do you hope to achieve by hoisting weights and pounding the treadmill? Apply for an educational course, and you find yourself bombarded with promotional literature. Here’s the future you: suited, booted and smug. What they’re doing – the gym guy and the marketing department – is highlighting end results. They’re hoping to lure you in by showing you what you could achieve, what you can become.

A new study by a pair of researchers at the University of Chicago and the Korea Business School shows that this approach has some benefits. Focusing on goals fires up your intentions to engage in the activities that will help you achieve those goals. But there’s a major downside. Stay focused on your goals and you spoil your experience of the activities you’ll need to pursue. In turn, that makes it far more likely that you’ll drop out early and fail to achieve the very goals that you’re so focused on.

Keep reading here.

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:


Michal Bohdankiewicz, a Poland-based Graphic Designer, documents his process on his popular blog “Make Cool Shit Everyday,” but gained rencent attention for a different reason; his personal identity. Creating a series of branded products and logo applications, Bohdankiewicz’s personal visual identity is one of this week’s Most Appreciated Projects. Check out the full series here.


Leonardo Dentico‘s unofficial visual identity for the 2012 Olympic Games is a network favorite. Take a closer look at the hidden details and various iterations here.