During our trip to the Big Apple, we met B-Reel, a design studio in downtown SOHO. Over the last year, they launched several amazing online projects and entered FWA’s Hall of Fame.

Alaa Mendili (Flash Developer), Seth Weisfeld (Creative Director), Niklas Lindström (Executive Producer) [as seen on the picture above] accepted to share their experience at B-Reel and their best practices. Here are a few reasons behind their success: creativity, hard work, a good cultural mix and a great team. We were aware of their great talent but were very impressed by their simplicity, their open-minded attitude and by how down to earth they were. Let me tell you: this is the kind of company you wish to work for! If only they had an office in Montreal…

Here are some of their projects:

This is a studio to watch very closely, they are the artists who bring emotions to technology. You can follow then on Twitter or visit and enjoy: http://www.b-reel.com/

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Jerry Knight is one of the three associates at 80/20, a studio based in San Francisco and New York: they are specialized in user experience. They worked with clients such as Apple (Aperture interface, Mobile Me), Adobe (CS4), as well as Verizon, Vodafone, Sony Ericsson and others.

The challenge in their work is to always make the interactive experience as simple as possible for the user (who doesn’t have a master degree in usability). Their design often goes unnoticed since it’s not advertising or branding: they really focus on the user experience. While some companies tend to forget that when they design, the user experience is the core of the 80/20’s business.

80/20 have developed a new cell phone operating system named Sonar; it helps customizing and managing the cell phone’s interface. Most of the cell phone market is still about “non-smart” phones and their interface is not user-friendly at all. 80/20 hence decided to develop a usable demo for “non-smart” phones to sell to major mobile companies. They took the risk of launching this demo because they truly believed the market was unexploited: they saw a good business opportunity. They signed a agreement with one of the major mobile company in United States; no need to say it paid off!

It was really interesting to meet with him and to get a different perspective on design. We are looking forward to see more work from their studio.

Jerry’s best places in New York:
- Allen and Delancey
- Club Cielo on Thursday night
- Momofuko (Ko) (it took him a couple of months to get a reservation so if you plan a trip soon start the process - they only take online reservations)

Visit 80/20 Studio’s Website

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I first met Richard Borge 8 years ago while I was still in design school at UQAM in Montreal. He was my teacher for an International Design class about illustration. His style as an illustrator is very unique. He is specialized in editorial illustrations for trade magazines and animation for music videos.

He grabbed a bite with us in the middle of a big animation project. I always like the way he works: it reminded me of the work Dave McKean does. He told us that it was in fact one of his influence. Each of them have their own style but you can see that they create universes in which their creations can exist, though Richard’s style is more joyful and dynamic.

His studio is located in Hell’s Kitchen as he used to live there: later he moved in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He told us that we are most likely to find interesting things in Brooklyn. It’s where the cool kids (not to call them Hipsters) are and where interesting things happen. The skinny jeans, vintage shoes and tattooed hipsters aren’t in SOHO or East Village anymore, but in Brooklyn. It’s now where they hang out, party and perform.

Places to visits in Brooklyn:
-Bedford Avenue
-Williamsburg
-Greenpoint
-Long Island City
-Dumbo

Things to see:
-PS1 MoMa
-Blackbird Parlor
-Brooklyn Industries

Check out his web site and reel.
Richard Borge
www.richardborge.com

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Jason Randal has accomplish a lot in his carreer. We have trouble keeping track with his resume: author, actor, songwriter, magician, musician, singer, stunt man, stunt coordinator for tv and movies, sixth degree black belt in Karate, certified hypnotist, special effects pyrotechnic operator, scuba dive instructor, single and multi-engine flight instructor, and a Ph.D. in social psychology. He trained Chuck Norris, played in Pretty Woman and was also a stunt coordinator on An Officer and a Gentleman.

How did he do it? By overlapping schema and time. Therefore, learning about something might just help you learning something else afterwards. And by learning several things at the same, you fell like you live on a fast track trampoline.

He explained that in the end, it’s how often you do it that counts. The more you do something, the more you are able to learn it. And if you learn something and you don’t use it, you will forget about it. It’s all about repetition and efficiency.

There are three critical criteria in order to be able to learn something:

• -Emotion practice
• -Power of intent
• -Use of motivation
• -Play and experiment by making it a game

• -Stretching
• -Toggling
• -Mnemonic
• -Overlapping

• -Get a coach
• -Peer Power (You are who you hang out with)

In the end, he explained that you are who you hang out with, and that’s what really matters. If you get around passionate people it will rub off on you. He also said that you have to reduce everything to what you can do right now. That way, you won’t be overwhelmed by the whole thing. Instead of thinking about how to do it from A to Z you’ll figure out how to make it from point A to point B, and then from B to C…

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Cheryl is a social entrepreneur and the President of Echoing. This global nonprofit company has awarded more than $27 million in start-up capital to over 450 social entrepreneurs worldwide since 1987.

While interviewing and selecting entrepreneurs she applies the pressure test:
-Passion threshold
-Show us your battle plan
-Idealogy vs pragmatism

She also shared a few skills to develop in order to be a good social agent:
- Core identity formation and aligment: mean it
- Focus and ability to execute with alacrity: going to execute and build on your own business mission
- Solution oriented: solving problems vs idea generation
- Ressource magnet: human capital is key
- Deep foundation of believing

Visit Echoing Green to learn more about their social work: www.echoinggreen.org

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Céline is a refreshing French graphic designer who lives in Park Slope (Brooklyn). We met her at the Loki Lounge on 5^th Avenue in Brooklyn.

She decided to leave Paris, where she worked on projects such as www.elle.fr and www.people.fr, to explore New York with her boyfriend. She now works at the only graphic designer for Original Signal Recordings, a music label located in Tribeca district in New York. She creates all the graphic designs: cd sleeves, websites, myspace pages, ads, posters, etc. Have a look at her portfolio at portfolio.celineoberle.com

She also writes a really interesting blog about Brooklyn:
www.thefrenchbrooklynite.com

Streets to discover in her neighborhood:
- 5th avenue (Brooklyn)
- Cobble Hill
- Court Street
- Smith Street

We would like to thank her for sharing her passion about Brooklyn!

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Seth Godin, CEO of Squidoo and bestselling author & blogger spoke the 99 Percent conference. He started the conference dressed like a priest saying: “You don’t need to be more creative, all of you are too creative”. Then he started explaining that you should always be in a shipping mode in a project. If you are proud of what you deliver and you follow the schedule, you will succeed and you will enjoy doing it. You simply need to ship and not being creative. It’s all about finishing and not starting.

He also presented his concept of the Lizard brain, that little voice that talks to you all the time (the left brain).The Lizard is always in a surviving mode, The Lizard’s brain is afraid, and wants to sabotage projects for self-preservation. “Don’t get more creative… Make your Lizard brain more quiet!” said Seth Godin. He also explained that the futher you get to the end of a project, the worse gets the resistence. In order to be efficient in a project, we really need to think, plan and discuss the most at the beginning, and hence reduce the pressure and resistence.

His presentation was very interesting but very short. Read this blog to know more about Seth Godin.

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Scott Thomas is the Design Director of New Media, the agency that is behind the Obama Presidential campaign.

The Obama campaign was the first one to fully integrate web and print design as a whole. The process was an ongoing work and, as he explained: “We were truly making an airplane while flying.” The website changed a lot since the first launch, but they really needed to get it up and running. It was in constant evolution. During this campaign, it was very important to deliver a clear and concise message and to keep sending the message of hope. The team made people feel like Obama was already President.

Here are 3 rules from Scott:
- If you want to get new ideas, work with people who are different from you
- Be around people who push you and motivate you
- Write things down, do a to-do list

Scott Thomas ended his presentation with the following comment: “The Obama campaign was simply done by checking out a to-do list.”

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Robert Hammond is the Co-founder and President of Friends of the High Line. His organisation brought the 1.5 mile-long used elevated rail structure on Manhattan’s West Side from the brink of demolition, in 1999, to the start of construction, in 2006, and its conversion to a public park. The first section of the new park will open in June 2009.

In his presentation, he told us that giving credit to others always helps when accomplishing a project. Politicians who never really cared about the projects suddenly were really happy to be seen at the inauguration. Hammond doesn’t really mind to be in the shadows as long as the project is undergoing.

The project is really astonishing. Be sure to check out the photos by visiting the website:
http://www.thehighline.org/design/designslideshow.htm

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Over the years, Threadless has become a multi-million dollars t-shirt business. Meet Jake and Jeffrey, the Threadless guys. Jake Nickell started skinnyCorp about 9 years ago in his appartment like most entrepreneurs do and soon his friend Jeffrey Kalmikoff joined him. At the begining, Threadless was one of their personal projects: they never thought it would become what it is today. Threadless sells about 100 000 t-shirts per month and has over 900 000 registrered users.

At the conference they gave us their best practices:
- If you don’t know how to do it, work it out
- Be 100% reactive: listen to your customers and/or your online community
- Get proactive
- K.I.S. & D.I.Y. (Keep it simple and do it yourself)
- Get realistic, but stay scrappy
- Brutal prioritization, maniacal focus
- You have to take the first step in action

For more on Threadless, here’s an article from 2005 but with a lot more info.
http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2005/09/skinnycorp_6_qu.php

Check out this video, it’s another conference they spoke at in 2007.

And here’s a guided tour of Threadless

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