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/

Bookmark to:

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

Bookmark to:

Brooklyn Label
180 Franklin St.
Brooklyn, NY 11222
www.brooklynlabel.com

Bookmark to:

The cupcakes are awesome, the WC look awesome, the music is great (we heard some Black Mountain while we where there) and the place is also a venue for indie rock shows. During the day, you see mostly locals working with their laptop enjoying the good music and ambiance. I really wish we had a place like that in Montréal!

Cake Shop
Cafe hours: 9am-2am
Bar hours: 5pm-2am
(open til 4am Fri & Sat)
152 Ludlow St, NYC
btwn. Stanton & Rivington
www.cake-shop.com

Bookmark to:

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

Bookmark to:

Visit Ork’s Webiste: http://www.orkposters.com/

Bookmark to:

Island Burger
766 9th Ave
New York, NY 10019

Bookmark to: