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Eileen Gittins: The Story Behind the Story
2009-08-05 02:05:00
Eileen Gittins, founder and CEO of Blurb, talks about passionate, opinionated creatives and the power of storytelling--and why they're both good things.
More About: Story , The Story

Questions All Young Entrepreneurs Should Ask
2009-07-22 19:05:00
As you approach your ideas as an entrepreneur, you’ll want to ask yourself three questions:
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Spotlight: Music Covers on the Behance Network
2009-07-15 21:26:00
Graphic art and music have had a long-standing connection; from the psychedelic concert posters of the 1960s to the Rolling Stones' interactive album covers (a la Sticky Fingers), the mediums are constantly colliding to create beautiful collaborative forms. Album covers are often an artist's best shot at a first impression -- they must convey the mood of the music within while staying true to the band's own image.
More About: Music , Network , Spotlight , Covers

Burkman Bros: Finding Inspiration in the Unusual
2009-07-06 22:41:00
“Once we decided this was the moment, this was the moment,” Doug Burkman says of launching Burkman Bros, the menswear line he shares with his brother Ben. Ben calls the brand “a mix of classic preppy sports ware infused with an eyedropper of the exotic.” With items from their first collection available in Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman, not to mention exclusive retailers in Japan, the UK, and the brothers’ native Canada it’s more than clear that Doug and Ben’s get-on-the-ball attitude has paid off.
More About: Inspiration

Airside: Inspired Collaboration
2009-06-30 18:16:00
You know those dentists who don’t explain a thing, and suddenly they’re holding the tooth they just pulled from your mouth? That’s exactly the sort of pitfall that cross-platform design agency Airside tries to avoid in their client relationships.
More About: Collaboration , Inspired

Tip: Reduce Your Level of Insecurity Work
2009-06-22 21:12:00
Creative professionals, entrepreneurs, and anyone else trying to make a name for him or herself have likely spent substantial amounts of time repeatedly checking their website's analytics, Googling their name, perusing email alerts and Twitter search results, or reviewing bank account balances and sales data. Admit it, you know you check some of this stuff a little too often.
More About: Work , Reduce

Hush: Structural Inversion
2009-06-08 17:39:00
Hush, a content creation studio out of NYC, has delivered its clients eye-catching content for commercials, music videos, broadcast, and integrated campaigns for over ten years. And Hush’s clients aren’t just anybody. With Nike, Estee Lauder, American Express, and Sony Ericsson in the mix, clearly the Hush team knows what they’re doing. They know what they’re talking about too.
More About: Hush

MagicRockLA: Mixing Beats and Art
2009-05-26 17:09:00
In LA, where the lure of fame is enough to pull almost anyone off track, DJ’s Magic Wong and Rock 1 are devoted, surprisingly, not to the glitz that comes along with their job, but to the craft itself. Operating together under the name MagicRockLA, the duo is the real vinyl-spinning deal. Everett Wong and Gerardo Machado (as they’re known outside of the booth) came to DJ-ing at a time when it’s cumbersome equipment and complicated mixing techniques eliminated all but the most eager to spin.
More About: Beats

Tip: Fight Against Your Short-Term Rewards
2009-05-14 17:03:00
From a very young age, we are developed with powerful short-term reward systems. We are incentivized to eat on day one with the reward of satisfying our hunger. Such immediate gratification teaches us to always eat when we are hungry. As we began our education, we were rewarded to learn with grades. And grades, we soon realized, yielded the reward of approval (and love, we suspect) from parents, teachers, and peers. We would study non-stop for days to take an exam, with the assurance that we will receive a grade within a week. As we entered the job-market, a day's work was rewarded with a monthly salary. In many cases, an immediate commission was rewarded for each sale �" or aggregated into a bonus at the end of the year.
More About: Fight , Short-term , Rewards , Short , Term

Taproot Foundation: Articulating the Vision
2009-05-12 16:46:00
If the desire to help is genetic, then Aaron Hurst has definitely inherited the trait - his grandfather wrote the original blueprint for the Peace Corps. Forty years later, in 2001, Aaron Hurst founded the Taproot foundation, an organization that harnesses the resources of millions of business professionals to build the backbone, or taproot, of the nonprofit sector. By encouraging professionals to volunteer their skills, the Taproot Foundation is able to create over 300 consulting projects for its nonprofit organizations.
More About: Vision

Clusta: Pushing Forward
2008-06-06 00:08:00
In the past nine years, Clusta has been lauded for their impossibly chic and visually tantalizing web presence. Always evolving, the English creative firm spends just as much thought on their own branding as they do on clients like Perrier Jouet, Coca Cola, MG and Publicis & Hal Rinney. We sat down with Clusta's Creative Director, Matthew Clugston, to find out what their site won't tell us: exactly how they get all this great work done.
More About: Forward

Tavis Coburn: Defying Convention
2008-05-28 21:48:00
Through a unique multi-step process, artist Tavis Coburn creates striking artwork for advertising and editorial clients like Footlocker, NFL, Time Magazine, and The Discovery Channel. Influenced by sub-retro design periods, his unique process consists of painting, digital design, and hand silkscreening each individual piece. We sat down with Coburn to get the skinny on collaboration, overcoming frustration, and the power of determination.
More About: Convention

Spotlight: Behance Team Favorites
2008-05-23 18:57:00
The members of the Behance team get to see a lot of great work. Our collections* have filled to the brim with some of our favorites by the incredible talent on the Behance Network. We felt it was high time to once again share a few of our best-loved projects with you, and we invite you to do the same in the comments section below.
More About: Team , Spotlight , Favorites

Tip: Taking A Team’s Temperature
2008-05-19 20:36:00
The chemistry of a creative team is absolutely critical for making ideas happen. What goes unsaid can erupt into a great fiasco. When a problem is brewing, our tendency is to block it out. After all, who wants to be confrontational or take time out when stress and deadlines are looming? But an "infection" left untreated can become a full-blown disaster. The most effective creative teams are able to detect and address concerns before they evolve into problems.
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Anne Benedict: Defining Quality Leadership
2008-05-14 23:38:00
According to Vince Lombardi, leaders aren't born, they are made. Smart corporations recognize at least some element of truth in this, and set out to cultivate this specific talent in their teams with the help of experts like Anne Benedict .
More About: Leadership , Quality

Directives, Part IV: Movin' On Up
2008-05-12 20:38:00
For a multitude of reasons, many creatives eventually find themselves in positions where they're responsible for other creatives. Whether it's a sought-out corporate promotion or the organic expansion of a small creative outfit, some find this transition difficult for a variety of reasons. In a field where most work is driven by passion, where emotions often get in the way and strong personalities inevitably clash, finding the balance for nurturing creativity and upholding company expectations is vital.
More About: Part

Fred: Thirst for Innovation
2008-05-08 16:12:00
Ariel Broggi is the co-founder and Creative Director of Fred Beverages, a consumer goods brand branched from thread, a boutique ad agency in Brooklyn. Hoping to 'inject the stale, sterile category of bottled water with some personality,' Broggi and thread's founder and CEO, Adam Gayner, introduced Fred in the summer of 2006. It is now available for purchases on both US coasts, internationally and online.
More About: Innovation , Thirst

Dvein: Evolving Imagination
2008-05-05 21:20:00
Dvein is a motion and interactive studio based in Barcelona. As a multidisciplinary studio, the team provides art direction, design and animation services for cinema, broadcast media and the music industry. Behance sat down with the team to get the skinny on collaboration, making mistakes and getting the job done, at any cost.
More About: Imagination

10ton: Creative Engagement
2008-05-01 14:33:00
The team at 10ton have one motto: the web is not television. Founded by veterans of the film, ad and internet industries -- Matthew Semel, Chris Chang and Lee Semel -- they hold that one ideal true allows them to develop and create engaging, quality ad and original web content that is thoughtful, delightful and engaging.
More About: Creative , Engagement

Tip: Stop Focusing on Visionaries
2008-04-29 15:08:00
There is a horrid fact in the world of innovation: The vast majority of new products fail, and most new ad campaigns don’t achieve their objectives. The brilliant minds that fuel breakthroughs are also at a disadvantage when it comes to getting ideas adopted by the masses.
More About: Stop

Brooklyn Brothers: Nagging & Making Things
2008-04-24 21:28:00
Guy Barnett and Stephen Rutterford describe their company, Brooklyn Brothers , as a “creative enterprise.” For clients, they are a fresh creative agency with a history of compelling ad campaigns. For themselves, they are a prolific group of idea-generators-cum-entrepreneurs with “businesses” ranging from chocolate to children’s books. Behance met with Guy and Stephen to discuss the joy of nagging and the necessity of creating tangible products while simultaneously serving external clients.
More About: Things

Behance + Wander: An Invitation for Creativity
2008-04-22 15:49:00
A few months ago, Behance teamed up with Los Angeles-based production company, Wander, to document the true meaning of artistic collaboration. The premise was simple: four artists, five hours, a blank canvas and the expanse of individual creativity; the outcome was an original piece of artwork, accompanied by an invaluable and unforgettable experience for all those involved. We sat down with Wander's Aaron Weber and Joshua Clark and two of the artists involved -- Justine Serebrin and Haley Ann Robinson -- to talk about the project and what they took away from it.
More About: Creativity , Invitation

Jeremie Saindon: Directing the Future
2008-04-18 01:35:00
According to Jeremie Saindon, the only difference between him and Musiqueplus -- Quebec's version of MTV -- is "a little hustle work and a few million dollars." By the looks of it, he may be right; after shooting interviews with the likes ofJutin Timberlake, Coldplay and Pearl Jam, he's moved onto directing videos for some of Canada's hottest musical acts like We Are Wolves and Omnikrom.
More About: Directing , Future , The Future

Tip: Question Your Elders
2008-04-14 22:11:00
How should we reconcile our tendency to seek the advice of experts with our desire to also question the status quo and try things differently? As creative professionals, we cannot become imprisoned by the past, but we must also not be stubborn and spend our time reinventing the wheel.
More About: Question

Joey Roth: Brewing Sorapot
2008-04-11 21:56:00
Joey Roth didn't set out to be an industrial designer. Beginning college as a creative writing major, he quickly came to the realization that he may never emulate the work of his beloved authors and decided to pursue the design avenue of commentary instead. His first foray into manufacturing -- Sorapot -- occurred somewhat unexpectedly, and allowed a unique insight into the creative and production process for the many people who followed Roth's journey.
More About: Joey

Directives, Part III: What They'll Do For You
2008-04-10 16:46:00
There's that one person you know -- regardless of their career field -- who seems like they're wasting their time at a firm that doesn't appreciate their talent. It's hard when you're put in the position of having to compromise your own goals in order to make a living, but luckily, there are visionary leaders who are committed to keeping their top talent engaged, focused and invigorated.
More About: Part

Logan Hicks: Stenciling Over Criticism
2008-04-07 17:24:00
Logan Hicks is a stencil artist with an obsession and love for the grit of urban landscapes. Hicks left college to start a screenprinting business, and after a move to San Diego left him without access to the equipment required to continue printing t-shirts for "lame" companies, he found a love for stencils. Now based in Los Angeles, he finds himself sustained by shows, commissions and what some may consider a fairly insane scheduling philosophy.
More About: Criticism , Logan

Spotlight: Footwear in the Behance Network
2008-04-04 21:24:00
If there is one thing the Behance team has in common, it's a love of shoes. Granted, this love is graded on a sliding scale from 'healthy interest' to 'borderline obsession,' but there's no denying the fact we all fall in there somewhere. It would make sense then, that the members of the Behance Network would share a similar lust for all things footwear.
More About: Footwear , Spotlight

Tip: Reconsider Your Workspace
2008-04-02 17:50:00
Companies place “creative stimuli” like pool tables in their offices to inspire remarkable ideas, but what actually materializes as a result? Whether your office is made up of cubicles or open-plan architecture, your workspace should foster a culture of ‘Productive Creativity.’

Philippe Malouin: The Urgent Designer
2008-03-31 18:04:00
French-Canadian Philippe Malouin may have just graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in the The Netherlands, but if there's one industrial design principle he understands implicitly, it's that of thoughtfulness. Armed with this as well as internships where he studied under the careful tutelage of Tom Dixon and collaborated with Hermes, this industrial designer has only just started to show his true colors.
More About: Designer , Urgent