Posts tagged design

Obsession Sessions with Henrik & Sofia - by Ibraheem Youssef

During my time at SidLee in Montréal earlier this year, I was fortunate to be exposed to such a myriad of national and international talent. Among the inspiring people that I encountered, Henrik Leichsenring & Sofia Gillström are one of the few that stood out amongst the crowd. Not only are they extremely cheerful individuals, but they also are a supreme dynamic husband & wife creative duo. Being around them, one can’t help but feel really motivated to be the best version of themselves and aspire to reach constantly new creative heights. Once again, I’m truly grateful to know such creative talents.

I: What’s the earliest memory of a creative activity you did?

S: I remember thinking I could build a robot, I must have been 5 or 6. I made it out of cardboard boxes. I guess I was disappointed when I realized I couldn’t make it walk or talk.

H: I’ve actually tried on something similar. I was about the same age trying to build a helicopter with just one piece of wood and a hammer. I was hammering on that piece of wood for a while until I realized that wood will never fly. I gave up on that and carried on playing with toys not made by me.

I: If you weren’t doing what you do right now, what would you be doing?

HS: We would be inventors. We would hook up with like minded developers and business savvy people and make cool shit happen. In fact, that’s the next step for us I believe. We have a lot of ideas we want to see come to life, you know walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

I: Inspiration, who? what? where?

S: Maybe the most obvious answer right now, but Steve Jobs was an amazing smart and creative person. I guess you don’t appreciate people as much when they’re alive as when they pass away.

H: I get inspired by people around me that is about to move to new places, take on new challenges, getting into the unknown if you will. People taking risks in general inspires me and broadens my mind.

I: Share any of piece your work, recent or old and talk about it.

HS: Mixable Dancer is probably our favorite work up to date mainly because it was an idea we had that we could execute by ourselves in our apartment. It was a cool experience that you could make a lot of buzz on the internet with a simple idea that didn’t cost us more than a rabbit mask to make.

It is basically an interactive YouTube video where the user mixes the song and visual. It has almost 100 000 views today and the reaction on blogs was great and we even got an interview on Underwire (Wired magazine blog). We have a dozen ideas like this waiting to get started on, just need a few more people in our network to make it happen. Good times!

I: Name 5 websites that you check often.

S: Facebook and twitter is the first thing I check, there I have a collection of all my friends cool links. Buzzfeed gives me a daily dose of LOLs and other cool stuff. I get design inspiration from sites like Behance, awwwards and ffffound. Dvice is my favorite site to get insights about technology and some insights for what the future holds. I’m all into fashion and pop culture, and the Nylon blog does a good job of bringing me both.

H: Same here, I get my daily dose of cats out of twitter, Facebook and YouTube like everyone else. Lately I’ve been working on web related projects so I’ve been camping on sites like awwwards, siteinspire, cssdsgn and similar for cool stuff to steal. Lastly I spend a lot of time on feber (fever) a Swedish blog about everything news worthy.

Obsession Sessions with Joel Lazano - by Ibraheem Youssef

Welcome to another round of obsession sessions. The inspiring person I decided to introduce everyone to today is Spanish talented soul Joel Lazano. I discovered Joel’s work about a year and half ago when browsing through a myriad of design blogs. It was bookmarked at first sight. I was fortunate enough to secure some of his time for a brief Q&A.

I: What’s the earliest memory of a creative activity you did?

J: In primary school I used to make posters for the classroom and at 12, I started in graffiti’s world, due to my interest in illustration, typography and calligraphy.

I: If you weren’t doing what you do right now, what would you be doing?

J: I would probably go to Japan to be a sushiman, or be a cook; it is as close to graphic design that exist.

I: Inspiration, who? what? where?

J: To inspirate and have a clean brain, traveling around works to me. this charge my batteries! but the truly inspiration comes when I am sleeping: when I get to bed, before falling asleep, i think in the current project and when I wake up, I found the way.

I: Share any piece of your work, recent or old and talk about it.

J: Self-portrait for “Other mirrors”, an exhibition of Sonar and OFFF.

It is a representation of my world and how i am absorbing what is around me. This piece was created with an Illustrator plugin designed specifically for the occasion by my collegue Flan (in the project Overtype studio vol.1)

I: Name 5 websites that you check often.

www.google.com, www.vimeo.com, www.ffffound.com, www.cargocollective.com, www.behance.net

[first published on http://blog.ibraheemyoussef.com/ on October 17th, 2011]

Obsession Sessions with Ahmad Abdal Moneim Abbas (aka. Monty) by Ibraheem Youssef

I’d like to introduce everyone to a long time friend of mine, Ahmed Abdel monem a multi-talented Egyptian artist/designer that always try to explore new boundaries and creative venues. Aside from being witty and humourous, Ahmed who is also known as “Monty” is a really inspiring individual. I’ve known Ahmed for 11 years, we first met at the college of fine arts in Zamalek, Cairo and we’ve been actively in contact with one another throughout the years.

I: What’s the earliest memory of a creative activity you did?

A: The earliest creative thing I remember is when I was a child may be 9 or 10 years old I got some a5 papers from my neighbor Sherif Mokbel who was my first inspiration. So I drew a story about the Ninja Turtles meeting RoboCop .

I: If you weren’t doing what you do right now, what would you be doing?

I would be an Aviator.

I: Inspiration, who? what? where?

Who: Sherif Mokbel – Ashley Woods – Hesham Ellabban – Hussein Faheem – Mouneer Al-Shaarani

What: Radiohead – Pink Floyd – Daft Punk – Street ads in Egypt – blublu – Obey gaint – Posterboy NY – Charles Burnes – Frank Miller

Where: London – Nwaybaa taba – Paris – Berlin – Milan – japan

I: Share any of piece your work, recent or old and talk about it.

Border of Change - After the start of the Egyptian revolution on January 25th, a new era for me and all the Egyptians living right now. We are moving through a lot of different situations, so I wanted to develop a form of how we can get through this Transitional phase.

I: Name 5 websites that you check often.

http://themill.com/, http://studioaka.co.uk/, http://www.notcot.org/, http://universaleverything.com/, http://www.iamnotanartist.org/

Obsession Sessions with Daniel Julien - by Ibraheem Youssef

It’s time for the second obsession session with none other than one of the most inspiring and interesting people I’ve met to date, Daniel Julien. A graphic designer, actually a modern day DaVinci based out of Montréal, Canada. He knows no limits when it comes to exploring new creative boundaries, from product design, posters, identities to anything that oozes coolness, daniel does with swagger and a smile. I met him a couple months ago during a multi-week stint at creative powerhouse SidLee in Montréal while working on the next global creative campaign for adidas, I’m privileged to know such a positive person.

I: What’s the earliest memory of a creative activity you did?

D: I believe I made a Two Ply Eight Part Button Knot with the umbilical cord when i was born.  Second souvenir is probably drawing supernova military space stations and all-terrain trucks. They seemed so real in my mind — wonder how the drawings actually looked…

I: If you weren’t doing what you do right now, what would you be doing?

D: Probably Djing (so predictable). Been fascinated by turntables and records since I was a shorty. My father would get mad at me, I would crank some christmas disco songs and Greek dance music all day ‘eer day. Or maybe private investigator, yeah, private investigator.

I: Inspiration, who? what? where?

D: Mostly inspired by small things, the unnoticed. Wherever my attention deficit brings me. In crush mode when all is hectic and the deadline is giving me the cold shoulder – panic overcomes and then I realize that the solution has been in front of me all the time.

I: Share any piece of your work, recent or old and talk about it.

D: I was ask to build a logo for a collabo between Furni and Ken Diamond — Almost carte blanche. Only constraint,  It had to link Montréal and Vancouver. Printed on an hanker chief and laser etched on a pale leather wallet. Really into product design lately and many fun opportunities are coming thru.

I: Name 5 websites that you check often.

D: www.meteomedia.com, www.theworldsbestever.com, www.garywarnett.wordpress.com, www.smashingalltoys.com, www.thefuckingwordoftheday.com

مناظر #١٦ عن صواف أرت - ٢٧/١٠/٢٠١١

Manazer #16 by Sawaf-Art - 27/10/2011

Obsession Sessions with Jonathan Mutch - by Ibraheem Youssef

For the past few weeks now, graphic designer Ibraheem Youssef has been doing weekly Q&A’s with designers he admires, and posting them onto his blog. The questions are short and standardized, but from the responses of Ibraheem’s subjects you are given a lot of insight into the different ways a designer can think and operate.

Rolling Bulb will be republishing Ibraheem’s Obsession Sessions in order to bring it to a wider audience. Alright, let’s give him the stage.

This week, I’d like to introduce you to Jonathan Mutch, a young uber talented graphic designer that I randomly met over the internet. We were both pleasantly surprised that we also found out that we both live in Toronto. I’ve known him for two years and he’s been inspiring me ever since.

I: What’s the earliest memory of a creative activity you did?

J: I think the first time I really fell in love with design was when I was in the sixth grade. We were supplied with these white binders to hold some of our projects for the year, and were asked by our teacher to design them. I brought in a few issues of Mountain Bike Action and Car and Driver and cut out my favourite bikes, cars and logos and decorated the hell out of that binder. I loved every minute of it. I loved aligning the logos on the spine, the loved the overlapping shapes and colours, and I loved the textures formed by the cut outs and the decoupage. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that I could do basically the same thing, for money.

I: If you weren’t doing what you do right now, what would you be doing?

J: I was always unsure what I wanted to be. I wasn’t passionate about anything career-wise until quite late in my life. To be honest, I have completely no idea what I’d be doing. Perhaps a photographer.

I: Inspiration, who? what? where?

J: I find inspiration from many things, but mainly talking to friends, colleagues and fellow students. I also collect a huge amount of images from various sources online. I have found most of my strongest ideas come to me when I’m doing something completely un-design related, such as cleaning my apartment, exercising or just walking to school. Getting away from the computer, sketching out ideas and just talking about the project with friends has helped me so much, and is something I wish I started doing sooner.

Designers that are inspiring me at the moment are:

Michael Cina, Network Osaka (Derek Kim), ISO50 (Scott Hansen), Olly Moss

I: Share any piece of your work, recent or old and talk about it.

This piece was done for a type class last year at OCAD. I recorded 12 hours of my day and went exploring in Toronto’s west end. I documented what I saw, what I ate, who I spoke to, what I listened to, how far I walked, etc. It was a hugely challenging exercise but I felt it paid off. I restricted myself to one typeface (DIN) and 1 colour. The project took many forms before this final iteration was created, and I felt I improved as a designer in the process.

I: Name 5 websites that you check often.

reddit.com, ffffound.com, iso50.com, Facebook.com, reform.lt

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This interview was first published on Ibraheem Youssef’s blog on September 19th, 2011.