Written by Ryan Kelly, Designed by Justin Lafontaine.
Life as a designer can get a little ridiculous sometimes.
Move it left and you’re told to move it right. Spend hours carefully selecting a Pantone and they’ll ask for it to be ‘more yellow’. The boss standing over you, raining stale coffee breath all over your neck. It’s a wonder you don’t go completely fucking crazy.
But that’s the rub, isn’t it? You’ve got the talent, but you’ve also got to pay the bills.
Maybe that’s why the design community is tighter than almost any other profession. You won’t find chartered accountants uploading screen captures of spreadsheets at 3 a.m. or dental hygenists comparing crowns in online forums. It just doesn’t happen. There’s something about what designers do that requires a pat on the back, the validation that yes – you are capable of cool shit.
Call it ego stoking, call it a hug. Clearly, we love to be loved.
That’s why Issa Breibish has earned the provocative title Director of Community. It’s his job to make sure Veer – a Calgary-based stock photo house – has its arms wide open to forlorn creatives like you.
Breibish – a former rock and roller who was literally raised by a community – is the proud papa of Veer Ideas. Once fully flushed out, the site will be a gathering place for the design community in the same way facebook has become a connector between your Grade 5 boyfriend and Aunt Rita. More than anything, it’ll be a place where designers can come in from the cold.
“Creatives live in a subjective world,” Breibish says. “We really wanted to create a place where people can use their skills and come and play.” The company feeds designers material – photos, themes and forums – and lets it run free. Designers get an inspiring creative outlet while finding solace in the understanding embrace of other like-minded mouse-pushers.
Sure, Veer wants you to buy their images. But it’s about more than that, according to Breibish. “We are really focusing on providing inspirational content. It’s about having people use our products in unexpected ways, and with designers you know the subject matter is always going to be interesting.” Breibish is animated as he talks about the road Veer is traveling. “The growth of the designer/developer is really intriguing because it’s opened up a whole new genre of creativity. We get ideas from watching what people come up with.”
People like Kendra Malcolm, an Art Director with DeVito/Verdi in NYC. Malcolm has bookmarked dozens of sites she checks out regularly, even occasionally submitting her own work to them. “I think it’s great to see what other people are doing. It keeps me current, but it also helps me stay fresh so that I’m not following a style that everyone else is,” she says. For Malcolm, community sites are not only a great place to get inspired, they also allow her to show her work to prospective employers. “When I was a student I used community sites a lot just to build my name up a bit, and I got really good feedback,” she says. “I also got a lot of negative, BS stuff – but you have to expect that.”
Clay Kropp, an Art Director with Calder Bateman, is a little more suspicious of community sites and would prefer to submit his raw work like paintings, rather than his design pieces. “I don’t think community sites foster a lot of original thinking, to be honest. You see it happen all the time – somebody puts a new style out there and within months, everyone is doing it. If you’re constantly relying on other people for inspiration, you’ll never find your own style.”
Both Malcolm and Kropp agree that technology has exposed them to more new ideas, much faster. Kropp points to all the exciting things people were doing with flash when it first came out and how designers around the world collectively dropped their sketchbooks in awe.
In a perfect world, Breibish hopes Veer Ideas fosters the next game-changing idea. “Creative work is all about momentum,” he says. “Sharing ideas is what moves them forward.”
Featured Article, DISPLAY magazine.
Fall 2008 // Vol. 1 Issue 1
