Dribbble Meetup 2013 in Moscow

April 12 in Moscow was held Dribbble Meetup 2013 . At this informal conference for designers, two dozen strong and interesting experts presented in one of the main thematic social networks Dribbble . They are Evgeny Belyaev (Mail.Ru Group), Nikolai Verin, Pavel Grozyan and Dmitry Novikov (MacPaw), Phil Dunsky, Dmitry Zimin (Kinohod, ex-Rambler), Alexey Kandurov and Alexander Kirov (Mail.Ru Group), Mysmaksom, Pavel Proshin (Gipis), Dmitry Chuta, Vadim Shcherbakov, Alisher Yakupov (Classmates), Yura Yarokhovich, as well as unscheduled Alexander Khmelevsky and Dmitry Tsozik (SoftFacade), Denis Pakhalyuk (Ramotion) and Igor Stepakhin (TracksFlow). There were many practically useful stories and stories from the life of companies with a lively and cheerful dialogue with the audience.



Together with Oleg Andrianov, we are holding a mitap for the second time with the support of Mail.Ru Group and with the consent of Dribbble itself. The first time was very interesting and vigorous, although the organization and spent a hell of a ton of strength, exhausted in full. This year, it turned out to develop the idea and make the event bigger - about 400 listeners came and a dozen speakers. And the venue this time was in the center of the city, in the co- working station in Gorky Park.

Dribbble was created by Dan Cederholm , founder of the American design studio SimpleBits . It’s not easy to get an invitation to publish your work on Dribbble and, as a result, the site has a huge amount of quality work and the best designers from around the world. People from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Apple, Google, HTC, Path, Instagram, Dropbox, Pinterest and many other well-known companies show their current tasks. Our team at Mail.Ru Group also publishes its groundwork during the redesign of the company's products and the creation of new services.

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Like last time, Alisher Yakupov opened the program, who spoke about Odnoklassniki ’s design initiatives. Firstly, this is cooperation with strong icon-makers to fill the gift shop. Secondly, this is the Russian Design Cup competition , which will be held for the second time.



Next was Vadim Shcherbakov , representative of Awwwards from Russia. He spoke about the experience of professional freelancing, the experience and opportunities that it gives and the problems that will be faced.



The story of personal experience continued Dmitry Chuta . He went from a developer to a designer and described in detail this evolution. In addition, the day before he became one of the winners of the acclaimed Badoo contest and told how everything went.




The first segment was finished by Alexey Kandaurov from the Mail.Ru Group with an emotional story about star designers. He compared different formats of specialist development and showed that a well-coordinated team more often achieves great results.




After the break, Dmitry Novikov from MacPaw held a mini-master class on the rapidly-gaining Sketch tool. He live showed the basic principles of work in it, and also step by step drew the most popular objects like buttons and icons.



Pavel Proshin described his experience in the Gipis sports startup. He walked through all stages of product development and showed how his design evolved. In the hall there were many people who used the product, so Pasha managed to get feedback for its development.




After lunch, Pavel Grozian from MacPaw spoke about the features of the product designer of mobile applications. The company produces a series of successful products like CleanMyMac and Pasha is actively involved in their development.




Studio Mysmaksom presented its founders, Max Pominenko and Ilnur Nazyrov . They talked about how the company appeared and what it does now.




Nicholas Verin had an excellent review of his technique of working on icons. He described the basic principles of their creation, and also showed a step-by-step process of working through one of the icons in his portfolio.




My colleague Alexander Kirov from Mail.Ru Group raised a provocative topic - users do not care about design. Judging by the many stories of the redesign of services, including ours, they do not notice the visual updates or do not consider them necessary. Good design is important for opinion leaders, but the average person will not appreciate it.




Phil Dunsky colorfully described his work history on the annual calendar for the Chinese division of Wrigley. He defined the style based on several months and then led the work of local illustrators. It was funny to learn about the local specifics of both the plots themselves and the features of the work of Chinese designers.



Igor Stepakhin was at the meeting as a listener, but during the break between the presentations he made the announcement of a new version of TracksFlow . By the way, it was the only story about flat design at the event.




Yura Yarokhovich told about his wildly popular business application for tablets on Dribbble . And he showed the importance of the emotional component when working on any products - this is good both for the end user and for communication with the client.




Dmitry Zimin made a small throw-in, rolling modern weather applications. And talked about a very simple implementation that users actually need. He participated in the creation of a new version of the weather Rambler, so that grieved.




Evgeny Belyaev , another member of our team, has a huge experience in integrating the design of mobile applications for different platforms - Android, Bada, iOS, Windows Phone. He spoke about the tools and the process of preparing design layouts and resources for developers who use them in their work.




Alexander Khmelevsky and Dmitry Tsozik from SoftFacade were traveling in Moscow , so we managed to arrange a question and answer session with them. They told about the company, projects, approach to work and a bunch of other interesting details.


Dmitry Novikov finished the program with another mini master class, this time on Adobe Illustrator. Dima has a great experience working in it, so despite the late hour, the others watched with interest for his techniques and techniques.



After all the performances, Denis Pakhalyuk played a small DJ set using the Turnplay application , which was released by his studio Ramotion .



In addition, it turned out to collect a lot of interesting listeners, including from strong domestic companies and teams. Thanks to this, active communication went not only on the stage, but also outside the presentations - and this is no less interesting part of any good event. See photos from Dribbble Meetup 2013 .

We tried to maintain a balance between the practical usefulness of the stories and the opportunity to introduce the community to each other, as well as to show the most sought-after participants. Many of them performed for the first time and it was noticeable. But mitap is not exactly a conference and it is important to combine the cognitive part with the tusovka. It seems to us that it is this informality that makes Dribbble so interesting. We will adjust the format by the next time in order to make it even more vigorous. So keep an eye out for announcements on the Facebook group , Twitter and the website .

PS Thanks to the Workstation and ITMozg for help with the organization.