Posted by
shaggy | 14 Feb 2013
|
Comments (0)

This image passed through our inbox today, it's from a new book on the "Great Houses of New York" Sorry for the small size but a quick google search turns up nothing larger! A few more details about what surely must have been one of the great studio spaces NY has ever seen are available here and here and here. For another larger pic of the space click on through.
continued...
Posted by
James Self | 15 Jan 2013
|
Comments (4)

Seoul, like so many other great cities of East Asia, bustles and buzzes with life, a modern and dynamic metropolis. At night neon signs and giant digital displays battle for attention, advertise everything from the ubiquitous internet cafes (per capital South Korea is the most 'online' nation in the world) to the all night eateries, saunas and singing rooms. Like Japan and China, Korea and the Koreans are a nation of early adopters. Technology exists to be embraced. The latest digital products, software, systems and means of communication are all readily accepted by a culture which now not only adopts technological innovation but is a world player at its leading edge.
It is against this background that I exit the subway system at Seoul's hip, creative district of Jamwondong before ducking off a busy main highway south of Seoul's Han river. I've travelled on a bullet train from Ulsan's National Institute of Science and technology (UNIST), having recently made the move from the leafy suburbs of South London to start a new life at UNIST's School of Design and Human Engineering.
My final destination is Seoul's young, ambitious and rapidly expanding design consultancy SWBK. Founded in 2008, the firm offers an extensive range of design services from IT-based product design to brand consultancy, service design and their Matter & Matter range of fine furniture. SWBK's global design awards speak for themselves (Red Dot, IF, IDEA, GOOD Design...). They have an ambitious, skilled and highly motivated team, whose knowledge and expertise are sought by a growing list of national and international clients.
Their work also extends to the direction of design and cultural exhibitions. One such expo recently organized by SWBK, is the Sulwha Cultural Exhibition in Seoul. It showcases the work of some of Korea's most celebrated craftsmen, artists and designers; from master Bang Chun Woong's display of Korean Ethnic Earthenware (onggi) to Media Artist Yang Min Ha's virtual, interactive installation reinterpreting the process of making onggi through manipulation of digital content via physical, embodied interaction.
In a way SWBK's Sulwha Exhibition is an apt reflection of Korean society more generally. Traditions of the past live cheek by jowl with a modern tech-savvy culture, creating a hybrid mix of embedded traditions within an emergent, dynamic digital culture.
I pick my way towards the SWBK studios and am greeted at the door by co-founder, Sukwoo Lee. Having worked as an industrial designer for Samsung and then at Teague in the United States, Sukwoo returned to his native Korea in 2008 to co-found his consultancy with fellow designer Bongkyu Song.
I've come on a mission: to find out if, within this tech-driven culture, design firms have decided it's time to finally kiss goodbye to dated, low-tech analogue design tools like hand sketching and model making in favour of a fully digital industrial design process.
We sit down to talk and Sukwoo starts by pulling out one of his sketchbooks...
He then produces a tiny handcrafted scale model of his latest chair design and sets it to rest on a page of thumbnail or thinking sketches of the same design.

"I quite like this kind of sketch' Sukwoo explains as we leaf though his work, 'I feel like I'm freer with this kind of quickly made sketch on paper...just hand drawing. From these sketches we often move to these sketch models," he explains.
At this point Sukwoo scuttles off across the studio to return armed with a large plank of balsa wood. "When I touch this wood," he continues, "and I even smell this, it feels much freer than digital work." Sukwoo speaks of an emergent design language that is explored and considered through the use of sketches and scale models. Like the master craftsmen of his Sulwha Cultural Exhibition, there is something honest in the way he describes his expression of form through hand sketching and hand making. From the start, the impression is that these analog processes are integral to SWBK's working culture and design process; to their ability to explore and develop design intentions?
We move on.
"After this," Sukwoo explains, indicating a wall filled with sketches, illustrations and 3D digital models "we start to sketch a little more of the aspects of the form."

At this point Sukwoo describes how CAD tools (Illustrator and Rhino) are employed to test the potential of the concept. "The CAD model is quite rough" he explains, "but gives the team a better idea of proportion and curvature."
continued...
Posted by
Ray | 20 Nov 2012
|
Comments (0)

Chen Yaoguang is the principal and founder of Hangzhou-based architecture studio Dianshang Building Decoration Design Co. Ltd., DBDD for short. Over the past two decades, Chen has established himself as Hangzhou's premier interior architecture practice, garnering plenty of Chinese-language design press as well as exposure in the mainstream media. (His next challenge is to make a name in the West.)



In fact, China's swift ascent to economic superpower status is readily reflected in his success—the studio has grown to some 30 employees—and continued demand for his work is perhaps the surest sign of the nation's trickle-down prosperity. Indeed, he has built an impressive list of projects and clients, from corporate headquarters to cultural venues, from high-end hotels to ritzy residences for China's burgeoning nouveau riche.
Image courtesy of DBDD
Image courtesy of DBDD
And as is often the case with rapidly-acquired wealth, it seems that money can't buy taste: newly munificent Chinese tend to err on the side of overstated opulence as opposed to the understated aesthetic of, say, the Japanese or the Scandinavians. Yet DBDD's extensive portfolio proves that prosperity need not be too ostentatious: the interiors are thoughtfully-designed and vastly superior to the gaudy Gilded Age-inclination of conventional Chinese luxury.
Image courtesy of DBDD
Image courtesy of DBDD

Indeed, Chen's studio—a two-story office space, plus a couple courtyard-house-style archive beyond the terrace—is a veritable trove of uncanny curios from all over the world (he took the design team to Bali last year for 'research'), scatterbrained yet somehow coherent. The East-meets-West pastiche of ancient artifacts, Old World wonders and miscellaneous mementos collectively expresses an understandable instinct towards extravagance that is met with a healthy degree of restraint in his body of work, which is well-documented on his website [NB: the site was down as of press time].


continued...

As the Portland Mini Maker Faire fast approaches, (September 15th-16 at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry), we at Hand-Eye Supply and other makers through out the Pacific NW are quite busy getting our booths prepared for the greatest show (and tell) on Earth. To give you a sneak peek of what you might expect to see at Portland's Mini Maker Faire we talked with presenters Rosemary Robinson and Britt Howard about Portland Garment Factory, their innovative company that is reinventing local manufacturing.
Portland Garment Factory is an independent, female-owned manufacturing company, established in Portland, Oregon in 2008. PGF takes pride in manufacturing quality apparel in the United States using traditional craftsmanship and sustainable business practices. PGF offers new and established brands high quality construction, pattern drafting, size grading, low minimum line production, materials sourcing, technical design and product design consultation.


Origins
PGF was started by Britt Howard after she received endless compliments about the baby clothes she designed for her daughter, Piper. After a serious inquiry from a New York boutique owner, Britt took the idea of taking the line into production seriously. She searched for a place that would make and grade patterns, work through samples and do full-scale production for independent designers. The search results were unimpressive.
Overseas factories have insane minimums, long lead times and impossible communication barriers. PGF was quickly conceived and instantly welcomed by the fashion community in Portland. Nine months down the road, Rosemary Robinson came in as a potential client starting a womenswear collection. A recent transplant from San Francisco, Rosemary was exploring the possibilities of venturing into a design and retail business in Portland. Her experience working for independent designer, Lemon Twist, gave her the drive to create a start up womenswear apparel line manufactured in the United States.
Photo by Ethan Allen Smith at WeMake Discovery Workshop
Photo by Ethan Allen Smith at WeMake Discovery Workshop
In a matter of two years, PGF transitioned from the original 300 square foot studio to a 1000 square foot retail/work space to now occupying the current 5000 square foot warehouse. In its infancy the owners cut and sewed everything themselves (while holding down night/weekend waitress gigs) and now PGF employs 12 people, has an extensive internship program and an in-house line of womenswear, aptly named HouseLine.
Photo by Ethan Allen Smith at WeMake Discovery Workshop
Photo by Ethan Allen Smith at WeMake Discovery Workshop
continued...
Posted by
Dave Seliger | 19 Jul 2012
|
Comments (0)

Now that Dave has traveled from coast to coast, he's headed back East, with several stops in the top half of the country. Portland was a blast, but now it's Mountain Time: the first stops on the way back are Denver and Boise. Keep up-to-date with all of the adventures on Route 77 by following @DaveSeliger on Twitter!

Day 25
After surviving the craziest thunderstorm I have ever driven through, I finally arrived in Denver, CO to visit Maura Gramzinski and Mark Veljkovich at Red Camper, a hand-made bag company with an interesting twist. "I was the child of two major hippies who traveled a lot when I was a kid in a red camper," said Gramzinski. When Gramzinski's grandparents passed away some time ago, the one-time photographer inherited her grandparents' 35mm slide collection from their numerous journeys around the world. A creative impulse led to a handbag made from the slides Gramzinski and her family had deemed not worth keeping. This handbag, with a little prodding from an industrial designer boyfriend, led to conversations with a waterbed company that resulted in a proprietary process for sealing slides inside plastic sheets that could be sewn together into a bag.
Red Camper's Maura Gramzinski and Mark Veljkovich
The prototype bag
Gramzinski finds slides at auctions and estate sales or even bought by the pound on eBay. And, no, Gramzinski is no longer using her grandparents' slides, as she is quick to point out. However, since her slide handbag project has gained fame on the Internet, Gramzinski receives packages of slides in the mail, with some requests for the slides to be included in the bags. "I want the collection of slides to tell a story," said Gramzinski, whether a fictional one or one actually from someone's past. In a strange way, this makes me think of Instagram, if not the physical versions of memories that Instagram is helping to replace.
Beyond the inclusion of slides, the most idiosyncratic part of Red Camper's product lines are the naked ladies. "My grandfather was a jokester," said Gramzinski, "and in every slideshow there would be at least five naked ladies sporadically placed throughout to make sure we were paying attention." Gramzinski had duplicates made of eight of her grandfather's naked lady slide collection in order to include one in each of her handbags. "It's about having a sense of humor and curiosity," said Gramzinski. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find film developers to make the duplicated slides since many consider it pornography.

Although handbags made from slides was certainly the idea that prompted the creation of Red Camper, it is only the beginning of the studio's product offerings. Laptop bags, made out of vintage car upholstery, came next, continuing the thread of road trip nostalgia and story, while greeting cards highlighting "awesome slides that might be overlooked" serve as a gateway product for Red Camper. Yet there is a worry that Gramzinski and Veljkovich will be "pegged as the slide people."


Red Camper has a larger mission beyond simply making products, though. "The idea of going somewhere and bringing home a souvenir has turned into buying something cheap and Chinese," said Gramzinski. She has a point. Why go visit a state on the other side of America just to buy a bunch of trinkets that were not even made in this country? I have made it a point to not buy many souvenirs on this road trip, because souvenirs take up precious space in my car (although I am very thankful for all the swag from the firms I've visited.) Of the few things I have bought so far, one of my favorites is a vintage tie with a felt monster sewn onto it by a local artist in Tucson, AZ. So, in Gramzinski's version of my souvenir experience, "Why not a hand-tooled belt from Tennessee and then you would be able to tell the story of that creator and have it mean something?"
Gramzinski described the future of Red Camper as a series of partnerships with local artisans and craftspeople to create products that are "representative of a certain region" within the US in order to "connect something you bought with where you bought it" and to tell that story. "I want it to head to the point where Red Camper covers the segment of American travel and souvenirs," said Gramzinski, "but nothing cheesy." The idea is certainly one I welcome.

continued...
Posted by
Perrin Drumm | 26 Jun 2012
|
Comments (0)

I first came across David Geckeler's work at BER-JFK, DMY's Noho Design District exhibition for New York Design Week. "Fragment," his three-legged metal chair, stood out with its shiny mint green, powder coated finish and the unusual jagged edges and cast notch marks under the seat. I saw "Fragment" again at DMY, where Geckeler showed it as part of the student show for the University of Arts in Berlin. Two days later I found myself looking at prototypes of that chair and others in his sunny Neukolln studio, where we talked about the philosophy behind Fragment as well as his other designs.

Origins
One of the reasons David is able to make a living as a full-time designer right out of school is because he took a much more conscientious and aggressive approach to his education than most students do. After studying for a year and half at the University of Applied Science in Potsdam, he spent a semester at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen before returning to Berlin to finish his degree in industrial design at the University of Arts in Berlin.

While his scattered university track record might seem like a less focused approach than simply staying at one place for four years, David purposefully moved from school to school to get a broader perspective. "It wasn't that I didn't like one school," he explained. "It was more that I wanted to try out different schools and different philosophies of teaching." And while he doesn't play favorites it's clear that his semester in Copenhagen was pivotal to his development as a designer. "For me it was really important, this Danish traditional design thinking and what they're doing there nowadays. It's different from Germany. The whole Danish society is so into design. They have a feeling for it."
After his semester in Copenhagen, David decided it was time to head back to Berlin to start up his own design studio to get a few projects underway before graduation. His first product was the "Nord" chair, or Nerd, in English. Though the chair looks more sleek and refined than geeky to me, David explained that "the detail of how the shells stack together is a bit nerdy to [him]." The unique way the backrest fits into the seat is a result of a class assignment from his Copenhagen days. He had eight weeks to design and manufacture a working prototype, and by creating two basic molded plywood forms that fit together without any extra parts he dramatically simplified the process. The Nord chair was awarded a prize by Becker KG, a German manufacturer specializing in molded plywood. The visibility from the award attracted the attention of several design companies, including the Danish brand Muuto, which will launch the Nord chair for contract and commercial buyers this October. David said he worked with Muuto for a full year developing the design, and that "it was important that a Danish brand make this chair because [he] designed it there."

continued...
Posted by
Perrin Drumm | 17 May 2012
|
Comments (0)

TOKEN's founder's Emrys Berkower and Will Kavesh have a massive workshop on the ground floor of an old factory on the water in Red Hook, Brooklyn where they're set up to work with glass, metal and wood. They can draw up plans for a chair, for example, and walk into the next room to build it. In other words, it's a furniture maker's dream. A few weeks ago they were nice enough to set some time aside from their busy preparations for ICFF to talk about how they grew their studio, what they're working on now and what makes a good 'hangover chair.' Scroll through all the photos below to see a sneak peek of the new pieces they'll be exhibiting this weekend.

Origins
After Will and Emrys met at Alfred University in the mid 90s, they moved to New York where Emrys settled into the glass blowing community and Will began building furniture for Rogan. When Will needed some help he'd call up Emrys, and the two worked like this, collaborating on lighting and furniture projects until they decided to strike out on their own. They continue to handle Rogan's Objects line, but after doing custom design-build jobs, beginning with their first gig converting an NYU classroom, they needed their own space and so they made the move out to a spacious studio in Red Hook.

Even though custom jobs for clients took up most of their time, their goal was always to start their own line of furniture. "After two years of prototyping we finally just said, we're not going to do it unless we just start making it ourselves and building it," said Emrys. That was in 2009, when they officially began the TOKENnyc product line.
They still take on design-build jobs because, as Emrys explained, "Those custom projects are challenging and inform your own work because you're problem solving and coming up with different production or manufacturing systems to build something."
"It's like still being in school, in a way," Will added.
Ethos
Will and Emrys describe their designs as promoting purposeful and considered living. "It's about living with objects that have a real task in mind," said Will. "TOKEN would never design a really super fluffy down chair or couch that you want to be inside of when you're recovering from a hangover - we would never design something like that."
"Although," Emrys is quick to add, "there's a place in the world for that. But that's not what we want to promote. We would promote something that's more active and engaged."

Take, for example, the TOKEN Lounge Chair. "If you sit in that chair it's definitely a relaxed pose," said Emrys. "It's definitely a comfortable chair, but you don't want to curl up and watch a movie in that chair. You feel a relaxed engagement. You might want to read a book and not fall asleep reading it." That very purposeful aesthetic is evident in all aspects of their work, right down to the joints, which Will describes using the the industry term "work holding, a structural solution that would be used while making something, but we've adopted that vocabulary."


continued...
Posted by
Perrin Drumm | 9 May 2012
|
Comments (1)

When I stumbled across Analog Modern, Peter Buley's line of rustic yet minimal furniture at the Architectural Digest Home Design show earlier this year, I was an instant fan. As the reclaimed wood trend grows ever stronger, it becomes increasingly difficult to find a unique voice in the mass of raw, unfinished beams and repurposed metal fittings, but by narrowing his focus on smaller, one-of-a-kind projects and relying on his years of experience as a craftsman, he's established himself as a leader of the pack.

Origins
Peter wasn't always exclusively a furniture maker. After he graduated from the School for International Training (SIT) he spent three years in Asia doing humanitarian aid. He went back to complete his Master's program in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. When the two years were nearly complete, however, he and his classmates had to be evacuated due to conflict that erupted around a disagreement over how tsunami aid was being distributed.

Back in the States, Peter worked with a nonprofit that builds wheel-chair accessible tree houses. He continued to hop back and forth from the US to Asia, but ultimately settled in Brooklyn because it "seemed like a really good place to be a furniture maker. I was starting to gravitate towards smaller things. I knew I really liked the detail of furniture and that precision." He made the move in 2009, but after relaying the cutest meet-story ever he then admitted that moving to New York was only in part because of work but also because his wife was living there. (The condensed version of their story: Peter saw a boarding pass lying on the ground in an airport and handed it to the nearest person, a woman who thought she had lost it during her layover from a thirteen-hour flight from Korea. The two ended up getting seated next to each other on the plane and the rest is history. Awwww.)
Design Ethos
Peter's overarching aesthetic and design goals are in the name of his business itself. Analog Modern is the perfect encapsulation of what he tries to do: take something old and give it a new life by pairing it with something new. The Dovetail bench, for example, takes the shape of a dovetail joint and translates it into a completely modern leg that supports a treated piece of reclaimed wood.

continued...
Posted by
Perrin Drumm | 11 Apr 2012
|
Comments (3)

I met Katrina Vonnegut (yes, she's related to Kurt) at her textile studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a small space in one of those perpetually cold industrial buildings. After we chatted and I ogled her vintage Brother sewing machine (see pictures), we traversed windy streets lined with faceless warehouses and side-stepped rotting animal carcasses (not joking) as 18-wheelers rumbled by on a nature walk, of sorts, that led us deeper into the heart of Bushwick to the woodworking studio where Brian Kraft, her boyfriend and business parter in the newly sprung furniture partnership Vonnegut/Kraft, works.
Origins


Katrina was Brian's neighbor before she became his girlfriend and business partner in a design studio that marries Katrina's background in furniture design as well as her skills as a textile artist with Brian's experience as a craftsman and builder. Katrina has a degree in furniture design from RISD, where she also studied and worked with textile designer Liz Collins (Watch this Cool Hunting video of her winning first place for her Cradle Chair in the Billes Products International Design Contest in 2008). After she graduated and moved to New York, she worked freelance building sets and making costumes for commercials and music videos. "I had thought I wanted to do that, but it's such a disposable industry. And it's such a fast turnaround you can't control quality as much as you might be able to on a longer project, like a film."


Oddly enough, Brian majored in literature at NYU. While he was kicking around job ideas post graduation, he began working part-time in a woodworking shop in Bushwick, and it just kind of stuck. Katrina describes him as "a traditional cabinetmaker. I don't know if he would consider himself a designer, but maybe more recently, since we've started to collaborate with one another he would."
Design Ethos

Though they both worked with furniture for years before teaming up, it's their collaborative effort that enabled a piece like the Maize bed, a design born out of necessity that has since become their most iconic product, fueling a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $6,000 to fund their booth at ICFF. When Katrina and Brian found themselves in need of a new bed, they saw it as an opportunity to design and build something together.

And it's not the only time new designs have sprung from a personal need. "I've made a few sweaters because I needed one or because I lost my favorite sweater," Katrina says. "I try and recreate a similar pattern but maybe with new colors. I think those are the best things, because you know that they're really genuine."
continued...
Posted by
Perrin Drumm | 4 Apr 2012
|
Comments (0)


François Chambard's studio, UM Project, is a bright, sunlight workshop located in the industrial end of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The main space is divided between a conference and showroom area upstairs, while downstairs he keeps the most organized, well-kept woodworking shop I've ever seen. Tools and materials are not only assigned their own cubby holes, individual drill bits stand upright in a specially made gridded base as if on display. One of the first pieces François shows me is a project he's working on with a music producer who uses 50-year-old recording equipment in conjunction with brand new engineering for a sound that's a mix of analogue and digital. Listening to François talk about how his powder-coated steel encasement will house this technology mash-up, I realize that not only is he a skilled craftsman, capable of creating work that is elegant and playful at the same time, he's also a total tech geek.

In fact, he used to call his style technocraft, but that doesn't really do justice to the handmade elements of his work. After looking closely at some of the pieces in his collection, like a massive Corian dining table set off by minimal yet oversized bright orange fixtures, I suggest 'serious play,' a mix of traditional craftsmanship and new technology with serious attention to fun details. "Playful yet serious," he muses. "Yes, yes that's good."


Origins
After moving to New York from a small village near Compiègne, about fifty miles north of Paris, François worked in consulting until his early 30s, when he enrolled in RISD's graduate program. "I was sick of doing only conceptual, strategic work and I wanted to do something more hands on, to build things." But RISD wasn't the right fit and he dropped out. "Nothing against RISD. I think it's a great school. It was a wonderful experience, but it wasn't for me. It was too late in my life stage. I was a little impatient, to be honest, but I was also very clear on what I wanted to do."
continued...
Posted by
Perrin Drumm | 21 Mar 2012
|
Comments (0)


As you peruse the website for MGMT, Sarah Gephart and Alicia Cheng's Brooklyn-based design studio, one thing that's immediately obvious aside from the high quality of their work is their sense of humor. The text describing a series of illustrations they created for GOOD that features anthropomorphized fruit reads, "It's a good day at work when you have to figure out how to put a sweater on a pineapple." Though the opportunity has never come up for me personally, I'd agree.


Origins
Sarah studied photography and engineering at Oberlin and Alicia majored in English at Barnard. They met at Yale School of Art during the preliminary year program, aka "graphic design boot camp." They made it through, however, and received their MFAs along with MGMT.'s founding partner Ariel Apte Carter, who has since moved to Minneapolis.

After school everyone went their separate ways—Alicia worked for Cooper-Hewitt and Sarah landed at 2x4 design—but they continued to collaborate on side projects. Soon, however, they grew tired of "working to the bone for other people and realized if we wanted to do good work we might as well do it for ourselves." Starting in 2000, they gradually eased out of their day jobs and by 2003 had transitioned to working full time at MGMT.


continued...
Posted by
Perrin Drumm | 7 Mar 2012
|
Comments (0)

At first glance it might seem like Jim Garrison is New York's poster boy for modular housing. Amongst the most recent projects his eponymous firm has completed are the Net Zero for the 99% house, a day care center for Lehman College, homes and townhouses throughout New York state and the award-winning Koby Cottage, a guest house in Michigan that was assembled in 48 hours (you can watch a time-lapse video of the installation). All these projects are modular, aka prefabricated, a dirty word for some architects, but Jim doesn't shy away from it. In an industry that seems split over what to make of the rise of modularity, Jim is excited about its many advantages, but readily admits that "modular buildings aren't the solution to everything."


Prefabricated buildings "only have an advantage in so far as they're made in a factory under conditions that allow you to make a tighter building that doesn't lose as much air to the outside and can be more carefully constructed." But they present just as many problems as they do solutions. For starters, they must be designed to be boxed and shipped in accordance with Federal Highway Administration regulations. This, however, demands that the structures be more robust and able to withstand all the trucking, carting and shipping before they arrive to a site.
I asked Jim whether he found it difficult to work with so many limitations. "I think limitations always make one more creative," he said. "If you can define the problem in a way that gives it boundaries and something to push against and create within it almost always makes you better."


continued...
Posted by
Perrin Drumm | 29 Feb 2012
|
Comments (0)

Hyperakt's founders Deroy Peraza and Julia Vakser Zeltser describe their design team as a family, and if you visit their cozy, exposed brick studio in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens it's easy to see why. The designers sit side-by-side along a desk that runs almost the whole length of the space. Music plays, a full bar is displayed prominently in the kitchen and the backyard patio calls to mind summer barbecues and outdoor parties. The mood is easy going yet spirited, and Julia and Deroy seem to be genuinely happy running a practice that prides itself on being the meeting point between social entrepreneurship and design. They practically beam with fulfillment when they talk about the passion they have for the work they do, and after ten years the world is taking notice.


Origins
Julia and Deroy met at Parsons in September of 1996. "We had very different personalities," Deroy said. "It wasn't an immediate, natural connection, but we do have a lot of similarities in that we're both immigrant kids. I came from Cuba and Julia came from Ukraine. We both had this work ethic. We approached work very seriously and we developed this competitive relationship. She would do something awesome and I would want to outdo her."

The two continued their friendly rivalry after graduation, bouncing ideas off each other while they worked a series of uninspiring corporate jobs. By September 2001 they'd had enough and decided to join forces. Four days before 9/11 they founded Hyperakt. "Everything was in flux." Deroy said. "It was a good period to try something new because nobody had any work anyway."

continued...