issabreibish.com

A Quick Read…

ibreibish — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:07:14 +0000

Just a quick note - I spent a little time at Bobulate this morning and stumbled upon this gem - “Not the Innovation I used to know” by Liz Danzico. It references an interview she conducted with Scott Berkun. I absolutely *cannot* stop re-reading the interview - it’s filled with gems like:

“It’s the behavior of leaders and managers that determines how innovative a group is, and most of what enables creativity is entirely free. You can spend a zillion dollars on creativity efforts, but if the basic behavior of managers doesn’t change, you’re wasting your money.”

He’s in my head. Hat tip to Ms. Danzico.

The New Veer Ideas

ibreibish — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:03:00 +0000

Well it’s out. It’s been a long, hard slog and the work is far from done but I’m so happy to have it out. Since September of last year my team’s been working away at revamping the ideas section of Veer.com. We previously worked on features from all the other parts of Veer.com - from design to usability to functionality. This time we took a little detour - deviating from the previously mandated .net environment to a new Ruby on Rails platform. Booyah is all I’ve gotsta say.

We’ve included all the usual suspects - portfolios, profiles, interconnected-goodness and of course the Skinny - but what I’m really excited about is the focus on content with new sections like The Fat - and on continuing to explore the ideas that inspire us. Inspiration is all around us and sometimes we just need a moment to let it happen. I’m hoping the new ideas section will be a moment that allows creatives the room to feel inspired.

Enjoy our work at ideas.veer.com

Update: Magazines Conference

ibreibish — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:08:43 +0000

Muhammad Ali may have said it best: “Me. We.” Talking about today’s web is really a conversation about re-humanizing the experience and understanding the opportunities that are available to us when we replace control with cooperation. Today was presentation day at the Alberta Magazines Conference and our presentation went well with a packed room and an inspiring audience. I’d like to take a moment to thank Colleen Seto for organizing everything, Karen Neudorf for facilitating our session and Milena Radzikowska for being a great co-presenter. Also, a big thanks to the audience who were asking great questions throughout the session.

Attendees are encouraged to download the presentation below for future reference. The presentation is password protected, so just drop me a line for access.

+ Download the presentation 1.8MB PDF
+ Beyond Magazine blog post about the session

This presentation by Issa Breibish + Milena Radzikowska is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Creativity Never Sleeps

ibreibish — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:46:28 +0000

Yes, it’s a little self-promoting to dwell on work-related stories, but I like this one. The idea the creativity never sleeps is a thread I see daily with friends and co-workers. The impetus to get up in the middle of the night to jot down ideas that have plagued us throughout the day to the all-nighter that allows us to follow through on the execution of a fully flushed idea. It’s in us all - designers and artists all the way through to engineers and the like. As long as there’s passion with all that we do, there will always be an opportunity to forego sleep for the realization of a dream.

Alberta Magazines Conference

ibreibish — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:34 +0000

It looks like I’ll be participating on a panel at the annual Alberta Magazines Conference in Calgary on March 7th, 2008. If you’re from the Calgary area and want to see me sweat out some ideas around taking your publication online, stay tuned for more details at their website. This years keynote speaker is Jason Brightman from MacWorld.

Event Abstract:

March 6 & 7, 2008, Red & White Club, Calgary
Recharge your editorial, spice up your design, pump up your ad sales, and develop a plan to harmonize online and print. Join us at Western Canada’s largest magazine conference with keynote speaker, Jason Brightman, director of web design for PC World and MacWorld. Come rub shoulders with industry experts.

Other confirmed speakers include: Charlene Rooke, editor of Western Living magazine; Kim Machado, General Manager of CanadianBusiness.com; Mary Newberry, former manager editor for Descant magazine; Malcolm Brown, art director of Unlimited magazine; Glenn Mielke, art director for BlackFlash magazine; Kevin Menshik, director of the agency Mediactive among others.

Come rub shoulders with industry experts. More details to come. Stay tuned! or email ampa@albertamagazines.com

Mark it in your calendars & I hope to see you there!

Rian Hughes in NYC

ibreibish — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 04:10:55 +0000

Design-wunderkind Rian Hughes is set to bring a new level of English-ness to NYC this November with evening of tea, buscuits and a healthy dose of design talk at the ADC. Saying that Rian is prolific would be an understatement - numerous typfaces, design work and creative consulting describes a typical month in this creative tour de force’s life.

Taking a day out to chat with a few fine folks in NYC should be a sufficient breather for some rich discussion. Hosted by Veer, it should be a great time. Come on down and spend an evening with us.

[UPDATE] All in all the show was a great success. The ADC was filled to capacity and Rian gave a great talk even while fighting the flu. I hope that all who attended enjoyed themselves.

+ My pictures are here.
+ More information can be found at Veer.

Bantjes vs. Vit

ibreibish — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:34:49 +0000

This weeks presentation of Layer Tennis over at Coudal Partners was simply fab. I’m a huge fan of both designers - Marians scripty-goodness and Armins no-nonsense aesthetic both move me.

The match played out in a very interesting fashion - Marian sending volley after aggressive volley over to the net which may have caught Armin on his heels. His returns were beautiful but definitely seemed to promote making amends over sinking the opponent. Philosophically I think I’d be more Armin than Marian - but she definitely wrapped up the win with some powerful conviction.

Congrats to Marian on the win and thanks to Armin for pulling through some beautiful retorts. You guys are fab.

AEA Chicago ‘07

ibreibish — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 14:50:47 +0000

This past August I was fortunate enough to catch the Meyer/Zeldman roadshow “An Event Apart” in Chicago - a city I’ve not been to before. Overall I’d have to say that it was one of the best (web-related) conferences I’ve been to. Here’s why. First of all - Chicago is an amazing town. Architecturally speaking, the city is incredibly diverse and visually interesting. It screams creativity. Secondly, the line up of speakers was fantastic and diverse. Jeffrey Zeldman was as entertaining as he was enlightning and Liz Danzico’s refinement of the 10 Rules of IA was brilliant. A real plus for me was that the conference was run as a single track session - no opportunity to have two speakers you’d like to see speak at the same time in two different venues. It’s a simplifying approach that makes it easy to see what you want. This created a very different experience than the one I had at SXSWi. Perhaps it was this that added to the genuine sense of intimacy at AEA that was completely unexpected. Watch speakers during the day then have a drink with them in the evening. Lovely. The material covered was extensive though not too mired in detail. It was presented as a building block - a starting point for conversation mixed with ideas to get rolling with. I like that. It’s the type of learning that works for me - enough theory to enable understanding with practical examples that let me get stuff out the door.

There were too many highlights to cover - dinner at the Billy Goat with Grant, Beau, Jason, Mr. Warren, Mark, Rob and Liz was probably one of the better times I’ve had. Cheezborgers for all.

+ The group pool is here

GDC Presentation Abstract

ibreibish — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:50:07 +0000

[UPDATE] Attendees are encouraged to download the presentation below for future reference. The presentation is password protected, so just drop me a line for access.

+ Download the presentation 1.3MB PDF

This presentation by Issa Breibish + Grant Hutchinson is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Title

Usability: Why is it so hard to make things easy?

Introduction

As designers, we hear the term ‘usability’ uttered frequently when discussing the web. But usability applies to everything we interact with … software programs, door handles, iPods, kitchen utensils, automatic hand dryers in airport washrooms, and pretty much anything else that requires a push, pull, squeeze, shake, twist or click. Believe it or not, many the things we learn while interacting with our physical environment can be applied to web design … providing you know what questions to ask and where the answers are lurking.

Issa Breibish and Grant Hutchinson will discuss why it’s so hard to make things easier to use. They’ll share best practices and qualitative examples compiled from their combined experience in web design and user interface development. All delivered with a mighty smack of the reality hammer.

Biography: Issa Breibish

Issa Breibish is a founding partner and the ‘guiding hand’ behind feature development at Veer. For the past 14 years, he’s been passionately pre-occupied with understanding how people interact with technology at a variety of companies including Adobe Systems, Verity, and Image Club Graphics. Issa spends much of his time focused on simplifying the user experience – and more importantly – getting ideas off of paper and into the real world.

Biography: Grant Hutchinson

On the way to his current web development gig at Veer, Grant Hutchinson designed typefaces, finessed the user experience, defined the product mix, and helped keep the storefronts tidy at visual content purveyors such as Image Club Graphics, Adobe, EyeWire, and Getty Images. Grant resides in Calgary, Alberta – along with a basement full of vintage computers and typographic paraphernalia that his wonderful wife wishes he would store elsewhere.

About Veer

Veer sources and delivers visual elements with imagination and style to help creatives diverge from the norm and generate fresh solutions. Their discerning, design-driven photography, illustration, type, motion, and merchandise products are used throughout the advertising, print, web design, corporate communications and publishing industries. Veer has offices in Calgary, New York and Berlin.

SXSWi Austin ‘07

ibreibish — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:20:58 +0000

Well, I’m here in Austin and it’s been a great time. Last night we went to Dan McKlusky’s and had a fantastic steak dinner with a bunch of martini’s. SXSW is getting rolling today and we’ll have to go get our passes later this afternoon. All the people we’re hoping to hook up with down here are arriving today so dinners from here on out should be progressively more and more interesting :)

+ My pictures are here
+ The group pool is here