What is Behance?

June 5th, 2008 by Jerri Chou · No Comments

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare
but Vision with action can change the world” - Japanese proverb

We’ve been talking a lot about “Make Good Ideas Happen” because we’re excited about the potential of all the amazing people and ideas that will be there. But more than that, we’re excited about making these ideas a reality. While we at ADB are helping with the vision, Behance is behind the action.

For those of you who’ve been seeing them around, but never raised your hands to ask what they are, Behance is a company that designs products and services that empower the creative world to make ideas happen. This includes a method for productivity developed through research with thousands of productive creatives called the “Action Method”, products that help you enact this method in your daily life, an online magazine which publishes tips and continued interviews with top creatives, and a network where creative professionals can share their work, critique each other, and develop circles of people to follow and collaborate with.

We’ll be using their products and method on Monday night at MGIH, so we figured we’d give you a run down of how it works.

The success of any idea ultimately comes down to action. Our method is a discipline for everyday productivity.

Designed for those with many ideas and lots of creative energy, the Action Method seeks to simplify project management and life.

The key to the Action Method is leaving every meeting with 3 things...

The typical creative process for managing ideas and projects is haphazard. Many creatives lose energy amidst unclear tasks, half-finished thoughts, ideas with ambiguous next steps, cluttered references, and little follow-up in a team environment. This method brings order to the organic creative process we all use in our work.
The Action Method is project-centric, not context-centric. We found that creative people tend to approach their personal and professional lives as a series of projects. Design helps us sort the components of these projects and stay engaged long enough to complete them.
In the Action Method, the outcome of every idea or interaction must be captured and transformed into action steps, backburner items, and reference items. Our research reveals that most productive creative professionals and teams identify and manage with these three components as a routine part of their creative process. While everyone should develop his or her own system for adopting the Action Method, the Behance Team proposes the following rhythm:

Action Method Principles

1.Capture Action Steps, Relentlessly

During a brainstorm, meeting, or on the run, ideas arrive in a flurry of other activity and can be lost unless they are captured and transformed into action steps. Action steps point to tasks to be completed. Each action step should start with a verb (ie.: follow up with x, review y, meet with z).

Turn Ideas into Action Steps

2. Tend to Your Backburner

Keep a “backburner” to catch ideas that may someday require actions, or just to clear your mind of the little and non-urgent things. Preserve your creative energy and focus on action steps!
Keep Non-Urgent Ideas in Backburner

3. File Reference Items, Sparingly

Keep only the notes, articles and sketches, that you need. Avoid clutter.

Using these basic principles, the community of Action Method users exchanges tips and best practices for productive creativity. Explore and Get Involved.

For more on the method, tips, products and inspiration, check out Behance’s website. Look forward to seeing the method in Action on Monday.

Tags: Culture · Internet Week · adb events · creativity · ideas

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