Meet the Team: Roxanne

Who are you and what do you do at Behance?
Hey there! My name is Roxanne and I am a Community Manager at Behance. As the voice of Behance both internally and externally, our team is always working towards a happy community through a number of communication channels. Being that we are the “first line of defense” and advocates for our members, most of my day is spent interacting with, and listening to members, helping to fix issues that may arise.

2. What are three desktop tools you can’t live without?
1. TweetDeck. Managing a number of Twitter accounts can be challenging, but TweetDeck has become an integral way of incorporating technical support into Twitter. With its customizable columns, custom alerts, and translate tool, staying on top of member communications is super efficient.
2. Spotify. I love listening to music and sharing songs with co-workers. Spotify is absolutely awesome and its “offline mode” is perfect for your mobile device on the subway.
3. Stickies. The next best thing since real post it notes. And has come on every Mac computer since 1994!

3. What have you worked on recently that you’re extra proud of?
I am very excited about the new ProSite Beginners Guide. We teamed up with the designers to create an easy to follow outline for members who are new to website building. This step-by-step guide is a great way for our community to get excited about, and comfortable with, one of our great tools.

4. What do you listen to while working?
At work, I’m usually listening to something that gets the blood flowing, mostly Indie Electronic or Rap.
Favorites right now: Grimes, POLICA, Kendrick Lamar, Alt-J, A$AP Rocky, The XX, Icona Pop, Frank Ocean, & Hot Chip. Get at me! 

5. Can you name a few favorite blogs and sites?
Buzzfeed is my go-to for hilarious top ten lists and animated GIFs. Plus, their Beyonce-related posts are always spot on. Immaculate Infatuation is another one of my all time favorites; from one foodie heart to another. And lastly, I get my social media news and geek fix from Mashable.

Follow Roxanne on Twitter @RoxanneNaomi.

17-Year Old Offered Internship on-the-spot at Behance Portfolio Review!

Twice a year, Behance hosts “Portfolio Review Week,”  seven days of community-run events that give creatives around the world a chance to present their work and get feedback from their peers. We were psyched to hear this success story from young photographer Cody Min, who presented at an NYC event last year and received an internship offer on the spot!

One day last spring I opened an email from Behance and read an invitation to attend the April 2012 Behance Portfolio Reviews. I was excited to go, but even moreso when I found out I could actually request to present my own work. The organizer, Tom (founder of AIR ) emailed me back later that week, and approved me to be one of the five presenters.

On the night of the event, a lot of other people in the creative field showed up. I chatted with Oriole Poole, Experiential Designer, Richard Borge, an illustrator whose client list includes the NYTimes and Coke, and the team from Bazaart, a hot new fashion iPad app. It felt great to be there as a presenter – especially at age 17! I met some of the most interesting creatives on the planet, learned more about different industries, and also made valuable connections. You could feel the energy in the room.

My presentation went smoothly, and I received fantastic feedback. It was interesting to hear opinions not only from photographers, but also illustrators, art directors, and designers. The highlight of the night was meeting Becky Yee, fashion and commercial photographer. Her work was amazing, and I learned a lot in the brief time talking with her. She was so impressed that I was presenting my work at a young age, that she offered me an internship on the spot. I was floored.

My summer internship with Becky was probably the most I’ve ever learned about photography. By the end of the summer, I knew how to set up and collapse a studio, navigate the subways while loaded with 70+ pounds of gear, and how to organize clients. I learned how to light and shoot everything from lookbooks to ballet dancers, and everything in-between (including designer picnic baskets). Coincidentally, one of the most memorable shoots was with Bazaart, the startup team I met at the Portfolio Review. They had also met Becky at the event, and were as hooked on her work as I was.

Behance made this incredible connection with Becky possible, but going to the review also inspired me to keep creating and presenting my work. Behance has become an integral part of my creative process, and I’m excited to participate in future Portfolio Reviews.

Cody Min is a photographer and filmmaker. His client list includes Google, ING Group, The Foundation for Economic Education, and various politicians. You can view his work on his website: www.codymin.com and Behance: http://www.behance.net/codymin Give him a friendly shoutout on Twitter: twitter.com/codysogunmin

 

This Week’s Most Appreciated Projects

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:


Fashion Photographer Dominik Tarabanski plays with diluted backgrounds, disappearing fabrics and unique movement in his recent photo story “Transitions.” See the full project here.


In Marcelo Schultz‘s new Behance project he shares a poster he designed for Harley Davidson as well as insight into his process with sketches and a ‘making of’ video – this is a great way to convey the way you work in an online portfolio! See the full project here.

Behance Talent Search: Student Edition

Behance hosts competitions for organizations and brands that wish to celebrate and engage creative talent. Creatives can submit past projects, avoiding any spec-based crowdsourcing, and an expert panel of judges select finalists from there. Competition winners receive a variety of prizes and job opportunities in addition to being recognized publicly. To check out upcoming competitions on Behance visit be.net/competitions.

All-nighters, limited funds, and not nearly enough hours in a day—being a student is tough! We’re celebrating the hard work and innovation of creative students with a ‘Talent Search’ that awards creative prizes to the top student work. Participation is easy and no new work is required.  See here for more info or to submit.

ProSite Beginners Guide

ProSite is a personal portfolio site builder that syncs with Behance. ProSite takes the projects that you’ve already created for your Behance portfolio and turns them into a customizable portfolio website.

New to website building? Apprehensive to dive in and take that first step? This guide is perfect for beginners just getting started with ProSite. Check out how easy it is to build a beautiful and customized portfolio site of your own.

Click on the guide below to see the expanded view!

Highlights from our Curated Galleries

Our Curated Galleries supply a steady stream of top creative work, organized by themes like architecture, packaging design and fashion. Our curation team combs through every project published on Behance to serve up the best of what they find. Click here to view the full selection of curated sites. 



“Animals” on the Character Design served site.



“Ghost in the Machine” on the Editorial Design served site.

This Week’s Most Appreciated Projects

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:


In this project Graphic Designer and 3D artist Črtomir Just experiments with illuminated cloned shapes with unrealistic materials. See the full series here complete with closeups and links to download.


Przemek Blejzyk shares some of his 2012 body of work in one project, featuring layered acrylic and oil paintings like “Poisonous” (pictured above). See the full series here.

Meet the team: Oscar

Who are you and what do you do at Behance?
I’m Oscar, Head Curator at Behance. My job consists of selecting projects to be showcased on the Behance gallery and the industry-specific Served Sites. In order to do this, our team reviews every single featureable project uploaded to Behance. We look at thousands of projects every day and select them for more than 60 different categories and creative fields including the Behance gallery, the existing Served Sites, and future ones. Each of these selections is then reviewed again and arranged independently, and continuously, to make the best possible showcase of all the work uploaded by Behance members. I’m also the Illustrator for the 99U.com.

What are three desktop tools you can’t live without?
1. Adium: An instant messaging application that lets me be available in almost every chat platform.
2. Chrome: The only browser that supports opening 50 tabs at the same time and loads the images fast enough to let each curator look at 3,000 to 6,000 projects a day.
3. Evernote: I use it to take notes that I can check from anywhere at anytime.

What have you worked on recently that you’re extra proud of?
I have to say the Behance curation. I’ve been working on it for more than four years and it is a big responsibility, but the rigor and fairness that we apply to it, added to the fact that it helps people, makes me very proud.

What do you listen to while working?
Radio stations from Spain and Catalonia, in Spanish and Catalan. And any kind of music that is not made only to be sold.

Can you share a few of your favorite projects on Behance?
One of the projects that I was most excited to come across was the editorial design for “S,M,L,XL,” the collaboration between Bruce Mau and Rem Koolhaas on the work of the architect because it is a living history of graphic design. When you see new trends daily in various disciplines, to see a project that will be remembered in the future as a cultural expression of its time, gives you another perspective on your job and a big geeky excitement.

Check out Oscar’s work here, or follow him on twitter @ororozco.

 

 

Behind the Project: Obama Mosaic Illustrations

Of all the art forms that might have you asking – “how’d they do that?” –  mosaic art might be one of the most mysterious. Charis Tsevis, a Greek visual designer, has made a career out of his unique creations – for clients like IKEA, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, and many more. Over the past few years, he’s created a series of immensely popular Barack Obama portraits, contributing illustrations, posters, and graphics to his campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Go behind the scenes and discover the inspiration, and step-by-step process to creating these. 

What was your inspiration for this project?
The inspiration was Barack Obama himself. Obama as the person, the politician, the idea.

Can you describe your process in creating this project?
The main idea behind all my Obama-related works is ‘Unity’. Obama consistently repeats himself with the phrase of “Out of many we are One”. Moreover, the relationship between the whole and its parts creates a fundamental base for all my work.

Once I have found the idea, I collect the various parts that are going to form the whole. I like to carefully select the right elements between many photos and graphics. I spend a lot of time carefully preparing all the small parts. Photographs have to be cropped, corrected and enhanced so they can express the specific meaning I want to emphasize. Typography has to be selected carefully. Verbal and visual content has to be in harmony. After that I select the portraits of Barack Obama that express what I want to say. Although I have bought various photos from different photographers, I still need to work on them. The most important aspect for me in a portrait is light. I want the person to be illuminated in a symbolic way.

Read more →

The Benefits of Portfolio Reviews

Graphic design blog You The Designer  featured a great post on the importance and benefits of Portfolio Reviews. Written by photographer and Behance user Gerome Soriano, this post was inspired by his involvement with Behance Portfolio Review Week and recaps some strong points on how valuable feedback can be for the creative community.

Here are some main points he made:
  • Get valuable feedback from people that know what they are talking about because they themselves have been through the same struggles you’re having
  • Step back. Being artists, we have the tendency to be too absorbed in what we do and the works we produce. Portfolio reviews are a good time to separate the work from the artist.
  • Know where you can go. With the feedbacks given by the reviewer and your answers to their questions you will have a better gauge of where your work is heading.
  • Address your dilemmas. Portfolio reviews are also a good time to bring up questions you’ve been struggling to answer.
  • Learn a trick or two. Successful people love recounting how they got their “break” into the industry.
  • Practice communication skills. Most artists, especially new ones, have problems speaking about their artwork. Portfolio reviews are great for practicing, enhancing and evaluating your communication skills.
  • Study how the experts do it. Study how the reviewers communicate. Evaluate their speech, the words and phrases they use.
  • Develop relationships. Portfolio reviews are a great way to gain new friends and business contacts.
  • Opportunities. Portfolio reviews can be a venue where you get “discovered”.
  • Step it up. Portfolio reviews are system shockers.  They reveal your greatest strengths and lowest weaknesses. They state the reality of the market for your work.

Full article HERE