I love weird 3D art. The stranger the better — You got a magic lollipop dripping liquid gold delicately placed on a soft pastel background? I’ll want to lick it. How about craggy mountains with prism-like terrain floating high in the sky? Let me hike there! Iridescent holograms entangled in fibrous, neon wires? I trip wit it. I love this stuff! Designers and motion artists are using render tools to spellcast the most bizarre creations. Think about it: this is software whose traditional purpose is to replicate the real-world. The lighting, shading, volumetrics, soft and hard body physics, liquids, simulations etc., all these feature sets are based on real-world physics and math! Designers have started asking questions about what other purposes these neat tools could be used for. “How can I use software to replicate real world objects” gives way to “How can I use software to make my wildest and craziest imaginations become real?” Tethering your mind between reality and another dimension, between familiar and fantasy, becomes exciting brain food for your audience. It’s a subversive use of the tools, and the magical realism(and sometimes downright Dali-esq surrealism) that results is mesmerizing. Equal parts jealous and inspired, I set out to join them and get weird!

Prelude

What follows is a collection of notes, suggestions, observations, curiosities and mistakes from the last year+ of trial and error working in the “third dimension.”

A couple of quick caveats about the experiences documented in this post:

1. I suck at this! I’ve been doing this for a 1.5 years now and the main thing I’ve learned is how expansive and powerful these tools are. It’s mind boggling the things you can make!
2. I use Blender. Blender is an amazing free and open source project for 3D making. You can build models, rig them, texture them, animate them, and run physics simulations on them. It’s a do-it-all wunderkind of an app. It is the Blender Foundation’s beautiful gift to the world. There are other popular tools which I assume are easier to use and maybe give better results (Cinema4d, 3ds max, Maya, Houdini), but they’re also pretty expensive for a glorified hobbyist like me. Free trials are a great option for getting your feet wet, but I knew I’d be picking things up slowly. Also, I wanted at least the potential for the work to be usable in a professional setting. I don’t feel comfortable doing that with free trials or (GASP!) pirated software. There’s tons of Blender tutorials on Youtube and super useful forum communities, so there’s a lot of help out there. From what I can tell, all these apps share the many basics concepts(which is good!), though the execution can be wildly different (which isn’t as good!). I guess you’ll have to take heart in the fact that you can’t know every little thing about every single design tool ever made. Knowledge of the basics though, would allow you to pick up any of them and be comfortable in a short amount of time. This is the quickest way to achieve zen in the multidimensional-design-tool-scape we live in now.
3. I did have some Maya knowledge. Memory is a dusty attic, but after brushing off the cobwebs and spiders in my brain, I was reminded that I made some dumb stuff ten years ago in college for an integrated arts course. So I’m not entirely unfamiliar with 3d views and 3d tool user interfaces. That might have made it a little easier for me, but it sure felt like I was starting from scratch.

Anyway, here goes nothing!

Blender’s “malleable” interface.

Blender is a pretty quirky system that’s built out of panels. It takes a bit of getting used to, but what tool doesn’t. (Do you remember the first time you opened Photoshop?) Each panel has its own properties and abilities — the 3d viewer lets you look at your models, the timeline is for keyframing, the node editor lets make textures, etc. etc. etc. Any panel can become another panel at any time! This is crazy! As a web/ui designer I can’t get over that it’s built this way AND it works reasonably well!

It’s pretty intimidating at first, but never fear! The ones mentioned above are the ones I use most frequently. The 3d viewer panel is where you do all your modeling, positioning and lighting. The node editor is where you build your materials. The right rail of the default interface is the properties panel. It holds all the properties of the thing you have selected (you can name the object here, check out its materials, add mesh effects(called modifiers) and much more. Occasionally, I’ll use the timeline, graph editor, and dope sheet for animating, easing and moving keyframes around. The rest of them, who knows what they are! Maybe I’ll use them someday.

Right click!

Seconds after opening Blender you’ll immediately start clicking the default cube to try to move it around. You’ll try to click and click and click and click on it, but it won’t select or budge. This is a pretty devastating moment to your psyche: The thrill and excitement to play in new software is immediately tempered by failure to do the simplest task you can think of. It’s the most frustrating way to start learning something new.

Turns out you that you need to RIGHT CLICK to select objects in Blender. It’s a crazy opposite world that I don’t understand, but have reprogrammed my brain to accept. I suspect it’s probably possible to change it, I’ve never googled it to find out. Maybe do that to make your life easier.

So if you find yourself clicking really really hard on that damn cube and nothings happens, it’s okay! Deep breaths, right click on it, and drag it anywhere you want to go!

Use a full keyboard

There’s a host of useful hotkeys hidden in the in the function rail and the num-pad of a fully-featured keyboard. Shortcuts are super useful in jumping quickly between features, tools, or views. Get a keyboard and learn a bunch of them. I’m stuck in the mud with a stupid laptop keyboard, you can laugh at me as you drive by on your fancy hotkeys.

Bool Tool!

As a dummy who sucks a modeling, one of the ways my brain can wrap it’s head around building things is through adding and subtracting shapes. They call this booleaning in 3d software (it’s some kinda of algebraic-math term. Again, it’s really fun to me to learn about all this math under the hood that allows us to make really weird stuff). The bool tool is my hero!

Check it out:

I use it to cut holes in stuff, or merge weird shapes together. It reminds merging and trimming paths in Illustrator.

Lighting is (kinda) just like real life

Understanding lighting and texturing was really challenging. If you’re just starting out, it’s going to be a lot of trial and error for awhile. But one thing I realized early on was that lighting objects in Blender shares similarities to lighting objects in a photo studio. Objects in real life don’t just automatically look beautiful. If you’re in a studio and you want something to look good on set, there’s a bunch of equipment you need to set up. You might set up a key light, a fill light, reflectors, diffusers, a seamless backdrop, color gels etc. etc. etc. depending on how complex you want to get.

Just like in life, in Blender you need to build and place all these same tools around the models you’ve made. Only it’s much easier to reposition lights and papers in Blender then in a studio (No expensive lights, poles, clamps, or heavy lifting required!). If you want some shadows, throw some objects in front of the light! If you want reflections on your glass, fill your “room” up with stuff(lights, objects, textures, a world texture) for the glass or metal material to reflect.

Rendering is forever

Nobody told me that what “rendering” really means is “waiting”. Waiting as the computer calculates each pixel to output. Waiting for the estimated render time to dwindle down, only to spike back up again. Waiting for my laptop fans to stop spinning.

Watching the computer slowly puzzling your render together one 16 pixel by 16 pixel piece at a time is agonizing. Rendering a frame in high resolution on my macbook pro can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours depending the file. For example, it took 3 old macbooks and UQ developer Lily Zhou’s tricked out gaming pc an entire weekend to render the 250 frames of our website intro on uq.com. If I wanted to make a change it meant three days to re-render. (We did this three times, because I’m insufferable :) Thanks to Lily for her help or those old laptops might still be churning.

I shouldn’t be using a macbook for this stuff, but it’s what I have and I’m happy to make due. There’s a bunch settings that I don’t understand that can help lessen render times. I should invest in learning them, cause this shit takes forever. I guess what I’m saying is this: you can make cool stuff with just your laptop(which is cool!), but don’t expect to wrap up your blend and do a final render 30 minutes before your client presentation. Plan your time accordingly.

But I’m addicted to hitting the render button

For some reason I still can’t stop myself from clicking “render” after every little change I make. Part of it is I’m often never sure what the values I just shifted around will actually do, part of it is probably vanity: I always want to monitor the true quality of what I’m building.

Don’t be like me. This wastes a ton of time. I’ll be tweaking and tweaking dumb things, while I’m only half finished with the set and don’t even have the proper materials built. You do need to preview your work as you go, but you don’t need to do this every step of the way. I’m getting better, I’m making a habit of using border regions to preview small areas, and also rendering things at ½ or ¼ size. Still, I can’t help myself and sit and wait for a render like I’m watching cookies in the oven.

Start Small

We do tons of app marketing projects, so UI on phones is a common refrain from our clients. This sounds completely lame, but in sea of boring UI and phone shots, one of the ways for YOUR APP to look really impressive is through careful angles and elegant shadowing. Drop shadows from photoshop always left a lot to be desired for me, so I thought Blender would be a nice way to create more realistic phones and potentially get clients excited about creating high quality 3D renders for the final output.

This was my first 3d project! This is a really small task! I would just make a panel approximately the size of the phone and bring the rendered shadows into photoshop. I knew next to nothing about modeling or lighting at this time. But it helped me learn some of the easy basics: using and understanding different views, selecting and positioning 3D objects, lighting, setting up a camera, and actually rendering something. It also helped make for a higher fidelity and more compelling first round of design!

Tutorials are everywhere

A lot of my questions have already been answered by really helpful people on the internet. Yes, googling how to do everything, all the time, is extremely exhausting. But every search gets you a little bit more familiar with how the software works, what attributes and panels do what, how to make materials etc. etc. etc.

I’ve one embarrassing confession: I sometimes watch tutorials before I go to bed.

This is an attempt to learn through osmosis and also a nice way to lullaby myself to sleep. Some people watch Bob Ross, I watch soothing Blender tuts. (I also watch Bob Ross, RIP)

Watch a few interface and “Selecting and editing objects” tutorials.

I didn’t do this and I think it slowed my learning down. It’s important to learn some of the fundamentals. There are a bunch of shortcuts to select rows of vertices that are super helpful to jumpstart modifying models and making interesting things.

Find opportunities to add to your palette

Learning in a vacuum is hard. It’s a bit easier to pick something up if you have something in mind you want to create. Try to notice opportunities where a little 3D might spice up your design projects and carve out opportunities for yourself to improve your skills. Want some practical magic? Here’s a few personal examples:

Let’s start with a marketing site we made for for Samsung’s 3-in-1 laptop, the Chromebook Pro. Layered and folded papers seemed like an interesting visual concept to accentuate the device’s dynamic 360° hinge. The laptop is an ever-changing book/tablet/writing/work/play machine, and by pairing it with dynamic and colorful set pieces, we can project it as a fun addition to your life. I was determined to illustrate the concept as best I could. This was really early days in my blending career, but I managed to create some FPO style slides that I could build into a site concept. Mind you, dear reader, these were made with very rudimentary skills.

So, naturally, that idea was a bit too far out there for the client, and we eventually decided to focus on the device itself. We could use high quality renders to show off how the device opens, closes and folds as you scroll through the website. Those really crude models, made for a scraped concept, were still super beneficial in finding interesting device patterns, layering app screens, creating layouts, and storyboarding the interactivity. This made communicating with ACTUAL render professionals a breeze, and got us all to production-ready, high-quality final outputs much faster. Imagine that!

Remember that nifty intro animation for uq.com (see above)? I wanted some motivation to start animating in Blender, and this seemed like a nice opportunity. Anyone familiar with with keyframing can do basic animations in Blender. To ease myself into animating, I planned out the bulk of the animation in After Effects, and layered some magical 3d shapes, glass and gems on top of the flat animation. The rendering here wasn’t too adventurous, but it added an extra layer of “wow!” to the animation.

Last year we launch Beacon, a small disaster relief project to help raise money for those affected by the numerous back-to-back disasters last summer. Generous (and talented!) designers from all over the world submitted beautiful posters to the project. It seemed a crime not to put them to use! We wanted a cool visual story to introduce the initiative. I pictured posters hanging in the air, bravely holding their own against torrential winds. So I got to blending. I learned how to pin meshes, add cloth dynamics and a wind force, and voila! Posters elegantly blowing in the wind. Check ’em out!

And at an even dumber scale, I was excited to render a seasonal something-or-other, for my yearly holiday cards. Why not explore what Santa’s up to in the frozen north? I could play with some effects, hide my bad modeling skills behind a wall of ice and surprise my friends and family with something weird and fun. I learned a ton about lighting, texturing, materials, displacement, coloring, hair particles, and sculpting just from making a weird christmas card!

Conclusion

So what’s the point of all this you ask? I must first acknowledge that there are many more qualified and talented artists out there, who’s work my little experiments pale in comparison. They’re creativity inspires me everyday. I’m nowhere close to what they can do. BUT! What’s really cool is I suck at this and still made some pretty interesting things! I haven’t sunk tons of costs into fancy software, nor a souped-up-extreme-render machine. I get better with every file I open. I’m excited every time I hit the render button. I’m enjoying the puzzle of making something new. These skills have made my work more substantial and exciting. They’re proof of more expanded offerings we can provide our clients, and an expanded skill set that opens new realms of ideas I would never have thought of executing before. And perhaps most importantly, I’m having fun.

What I can’t stress enough, dear reader, is that you can do any of this stuff too. It doesn’t have to be Blender. Cinema 4d lite is embedded in After Effects. So if you have Creative Cloud, you have it. Maya has free trials. Houdini provides an apprentice version. The internet is full of tutorials for any 3d app you can think of. Everything you learn can be applied to a whole host of industry related things. It can be applied to advertising, branding, animation, film, motion graphics, interfaces, VR, AR, games. It’s a door to big possibilities. Don’t let the fear of the unknown stop you from walking on through.

Appendix

Please enjoy this best short film ever made:

Postscript

Our studio has been getting jazzed about 3D too, and a few of our design folks are taking Devon Ko’s 3D for Designers course. Let’s all look forward(or peer pressure) them to get posting on what life is like learning Cinema4d!

Upperquad is a growing team of designers, developers and producers brought together by good fortune, great clients and a shared drive to make amazing things.

Jason Dietrick is creative director @Upperquad.

3d and Me was originally published in Upperquad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Some learnings from the field

Giving back is important. We at Upperquad always look for the to chance create work and contribute to groups that positively reflect our culture and values.

Design — and designers — can and should make a difference. But, finding the space between unbridled “design-will-save-the world” optimism and “throw-up-your-hands-OMG-nothing-matters” pessimism is not an easy thing to do. Start small, give back where and what you can.

Based on our experience, here’s some completely unsolicited advice on how to do something for good.

I.

Volunteer your expertise

If you have time, are passionate and are looking to collaborate

Volunteering your time for is a great way to contribute. But, if you have a particular expertise, that might actually be the best bit of your time to give.

Recently, we volunteered to create a new website for 826 Valencia. It’s an organization that we have admired for a long time; their dedication to supporting under-resourced students with their writing skills and a creative sense of imagination and whimsy made this a dream project.

So, we dug in and got started. We built them a new site that was clear, precise and was based on some serious research into how they ran their organization. We wanted to make something functional and beautiful, that spoke to their audience, streamlined their volunteer sign up process and got more dollars in donations. Essentially, using design and development to solve real problems.

This wasn’t our first time around the block. There’s a couple things we’ve found to be exceptionally helpful in setting up pro bono projects.

1. Treat (pro bono) clients like clients

Be sure to offer them the same level of service that you would anyone else you work with. It’s easy to get casual, but make sure you treat the project like you would any other.

2. Be upfront with expectations

Be very clear about how much time you can spend or what work you can do upfront. You may be working off hours or filling in time between projects. Be clear about longer turnarounds. Talk about this at the beginning so there aren’t any surprises later. Constraints, believe it are not, can actually be a good thing.

3. Expect (maybe lots of) feedback

Even if you aren’t getting paid, it doesn’t mean you won’t get design feedback. We’ve actually found that the most feedback comes actually from pro bono projects. Help guide your clients on what to give feedback on and be sure to incorporate what you can. Remember they are experts in their field too.

4. Design for results

Adulations are nice and all, but that’s not what you’re in this for. Make something for your client and be sure to dive into the unsexy details. Don’t just make a portfolio piece, but look for ways to make things better for them.

II.

Create the project you want

If you have time, passion and are looking for creative control

It’s also great just to create something on your own terms. Last year, we created Beacon, a disaster relief project, after back-to-back-to-back hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires. We wanted to not only give to communities in need, but to make something meaningful. We were amazed at the number of talented designers and illustrators who were willing to join us.

The project raised over $10,000 for Direct Relief through donations and sales. Even though the damage from the disasters was immense, we are proud to make a small difference here.

Some of our take aways from our experience:

1. Move quickly

Time is of the essence. With constantly evolving news cycles, it’s hard for people to stay focused. We got our site up a little over 1 month after the first hurricane, but it almost felt like we missed our opportunity.

2. Don’t be afraid to ask

We were amazed at how many people were willing to help. All it took was a sincere email from the heart and we connected with so many people who were feeling the same way we did.

3. Be brazen

We came up with the biggest idea we could and ran with it.

4. Find the right charity to support

We did some diligence in selecting Direct Relief, an amazing organization. We wanted to make sure that the beneficiary lined up with the goals of the project.

III.

Make something that matters to you

If you have minimal time, a ton of passion and want to make something quick

The best design work often comes from the things we are passionate about. We’ve always encouraged people here at Upperquad to make things (like this, this, this and these) and find an outlet. This is always a great way to get something out quickly and timely, without getting bogged down in details.

IV.

Just plain give, if you can

Money is sometimes just the easiest way to go.

If you are able to do so, contributing money is sometimes the best and easiest way to support non-profits and charities. OK, there’s no actual design involved — except maybe that you are giving some of your hard earned dollars made from pixel pushing — but direct funding is always needed and always appreciated.

In the last year, we’ve been proud to support causes close to our hearts with donations to the SFMOMA, Direct Relief and Design Nation.

Upperquad is a growing team of designers, developers and producers brought together by good fortune, great clients and a shared drive to make amazing things.

Art generated entirely in Three.js code by Robin Payot.

Phil Ruppanner is the founder and managing director of Upperquad, works hard and is generally a pretty nice guy I hear.

Hey, follow us on Instagram!

Design for social impact was originally published in Upperquad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This last year was a leap forward for Upperquad. Not a step or jump. But a full-on leap.

It took a lot of work and more than a few late nights to round out 2018, but we built on the solid foundation that was 2017: a new website & brand, new studio space and greater recognition. We collectively pushed our studio forward and couldn’t be prouder of the work we did along the way. Here’s a quick breakdown of what made 2018 particularly amazing.

Our people

The best thing about Upperquad is still — and always — the people that work here. It’s true of 2018, it’s true since we started.

We have an amazing team of exceptionally talented people and that team got a little more talented and exceptional last year. We added nine people including: Emily X., Rodney, Robin, Antonio, Emily H., John, Yanlin, Simone and Evan.

But, it’s not just about adding people. We also strive to be a place where people can grow both professionally and personally. Jessica moved up to the Creative Director role. Kailie moved up to an Art Director role. Both are killing it. Danielle, after holding down the role of Producer and Strategist (and excelling at both), moved to become a full time Strategist. Lily and Zhihao moved up to Senior Developers and started taking the lead on more projects.

The interns that join us every year are truly next-level. Last year was no different. David, Arnaud and Adrien joined our team for almost half the year and it still felt way too short. If you ever have the chance to work with any of them, consider yourself lucky. We certainly do.

When you hire immensely talented, amazingly good people, you also have to know that they can get a job just about anywhere they want. We want to be the place they want to work forever, but understand when they decide to take one of the incredible opportunities offered to them. We had a couple people leave in 2018 and miss them a lot; we couldn’t be prouder that they were here and they are now working at some really amazing places.

Our work

It is what makes this place go. It’s the measure to what we do. The work that goes out is what defines who we are.

Some of the particularly interesting work that went out in 2018 includes Google AI, Blue Heart of Europe, Instagram Brand, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Robinhood Student Campaign, 826 Valencia and Google Santa Tracker and Insights for the de Young and Legion of Honor.

Also, worth noting: █████ ██, Sights of Sound, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative 2018 Annual Letter, ██ ██ ███, ██ █████ ███████, Google News Initiative, Moniker, Change the Game, White Walkers, d.school updates, Robinhood ████ , a whole lot of Chromebooks, Lyft █████, YouTube Yoodles and above all █████ ██ ████.

It was a busy year.

It’s always nice to get some recognition for the work you do. At the very least, it lets your parents know that you are doing something worthwhile. We are super proud to win a Webby in 2018 (our 4th!) for our collaboration with Patagonia on This is Bears Ears. The Standford d.school site was also a finalist, which isn’t the same as winning, but still pretty nice.

Blue Heart of Europe, another collaboration with Patagonia, took the Awwwards SOTD, FWA SOTD and was up for Developer Site of the year. Our Dev team continues to push our work further and get recognized for it.

We also won an award for our most demanding and worst paying client ever. Ourselves. Upperquad was recognized in the Commarts Interactive Annual, which hits newsstands (are newstands still actually a thing?) in March / April 2019.

Our culture

As the team grows, we always want to make sure we celebrate and maintain the things that make us who we are.

One thing that sets the tone is the space we work in everyday (surrounded by books, white space and an obscene number of plants 🌱🌱🌱). We moved into our new office in the prior year, but it took a little while to get everything exactly the way we wanted. It defintitely was worth the wait.

We also got out of the office and did some fun stuff together, like going wine tasting, playing arcade games and dining out.

We designed and launched upperquad.studio, the official internal guide to working at Upperquad for new hires. It includes, maybe most importantly, a detailed list of the best places to eat within walking distance.

We upped our photography game, making use of our in-studio photo nook and Evan’s incredible talent. It meant we could start doing professional photography quickly for ourselves and our projects.

Our site for 826 Valencia launched, after quite a bit of work. It was a pro bono project and we are excited about the opportunity to give back to such a great organization. We try our best to be good people and this was one chance to be able prove it, to ourselves at the very least.

We also had the chance to attend some conferences — like Awwwards and Epicurrence — and even host a happy hour at UQHQ as part of SF Design Week.

Other things that made this place great in the one-eight? 1:1s, the Zine (coming soon), Upperquad en français, boba trips, World Cup soccer, the Royal Order of Social, office vibes, team effort, comp time, office blankets, Learning Labs, and of course #dogsofupperquad.

Die Zukunft

So, what’s up for 2019? We’re pushing our studio further. We’re continuing to build an independent creative digital studio with a global presence.

We’re actively growing (which is also to say we’re hiring), focused on taking our time to find the right people and maintaining an exceptionally high level of work.

After some serious research and reviewing more than a few options, we decided it was time to expand with our first international office in Berlin 🇩🇪. This kind of expansion has been a long-time dream for us and we’re incredibly excited to break new ground. We’re planning on opening das neue Büro in the Spring. More to come soon!

We’re deepening our practice with an expanded focus on strategy, brand, content and motion.

We’ve already got some amazing new clients and projects lined up, not to mention launching new work that is on our screens now (soon to be on yours).

And, we’ll be celebrating 10 years of Upperquad. It’s a milestone that let’s us know we’re doing something right. We’re grateful to everyone along the way who made this possible.

More than anything, we’re going to continue to focus on the basics: amazing work, being a great place to work, being great to work with, working with amazing clients, and advocating always for next level design.

Here’s to an amazing 2018

And an even better 2019.

Upperquad is a growing team of designers, developers and producers brought together by good fortune, great clients and a shared drive to make amazing things.

Phil Ruppanner is the founder and managing director of Upperquad, works hard and is generally a pretty nice guy I hear.

Looking for a creative place to grow in 2019? Visit upperquad.com/careers to join the fun.

2018 at Upperquad was originally published in Upperquad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And so it was a bittersweet moment when growing became out-growing and the time came to start looking for other spaces. We loved being in the Haight. The neighborhood feels, the food, the people… our first home was good to us. But alas, with growth comes change and now we have a new home that we’ve made our own. Here’s a look at our journey to get there.

Finding the right spot

We were all longing to stay in the cozy, residential neighborhood we were used to, but it turned out the zoning laws changed during the 7 years we were there. After hours of searching Craigslist, morale was, as you might expect, pretty low:

But not for long! We had experts on our side. Reuben from Custom Spaces listened to our every need and desire to help us narrow the search. They showed us more than a dozen promising locations before we landed on our new home — the spacious top floor of a beautiful building in the heart of Union Square.

I always dreamed of working in a downtown office. It’s situated on the top floor and away from the hustle and bustle. You are greeted with inspiring city views, interior landscaping, even natural light and a perfectly curated Sonos playlist.

— Evan Corrigan, Art Director

Morale was on the rise:

Especially as we started to talk details:

And just like that the contract was signed! We were stoked to secure the new space and we were ready to make it ours.

A Blank Slate

We established a “new office committee team” to take on all things new office — a special thanks to Phil, Andy, Le, Wyatt, Bryan for all the hard work they put into the space. We brought on Patrick from Principal Builders who worked closely with the team to make our dreams a reality.

Just like that, the shelves came down and the carpet came out. New floors went in. And a fresh coat of paint gave it that new office feel 😍.

What to do with (A LOT) more space

Our old office was pretty cozy. We all sat together in one long row — family style. It was a combination of three different addresses that came to around 3,200 square feet total. Our new space is roughly 4,200 square feet and the open floor plan makes it feel massive!

Remember when you were little and you’d spend your time blue-printing your dream house? I wasn’t the only one who did that, right? Well, this stage was like that but a whole lot better.

We made a whole lot of not-to-scale plans to wrap our heads around all the new space we would have.

And spent a lot of time on Pinterest:

Making it ours

We officially moved on July 7, 2017 and that’s when the real fun began. With all of those floor plans ready to be realized, it was time to get down to details.

Furniture

Andy, Technical Director at UQ, was great at handling all things new-office. Everything from communicating our needs to various parties, ordering rad furniture, talking to electricians and plumbers, etc. He is essentially the official Office Guru. Here’s his take on furniture:

In moving into a bigger space, we knew we needed to work on our furniture game. Our old space had some nice mid-century pieces and boxy bookshelf we used to divide the space. The main asks for the new place were a new conference room setup, a new lounge space and some more formal pieces throughout. As we’ve grown up as a company, the quality of our work, attention to detail and polish have likewise grown. And we wanted a space that felt like it followed that ethos; considered and polished yet comfortable.

For the conference room, we turned to an SF-based woodworking shop called OHIO designs. They build really nice, modern, honest furniture, with hardwoods that are sustainably harvested and integrated responsibly. We worked with them on a new conference table, along with benches for when we fill out the conference room in all-team meetings. They also helped us with a few credenza’s to tuck away the electronics and cabling.

One goal for our new space was to provide flexibility in the different ways to work. We all have a standard desk and office chair, but we also wanted couches and lounge chairs for a more comfortable change of pace along with communal tables for when a larger work space is needed. The spaces also double as meeting areas and impromptu conference rooms. For the comfortable, yet design-forward setup, we sought the advice of The Residents, a design shop now located in the Haight here in SF. They helped us settle on a couple pieces from HAY, the danish design firm.

Thank you, Andy.

Lighting

One of the things that immediately drew us to the space was the big, beautiful windows that line the perimeter of the building and flood the office in natural light.

The best thing about the new space is the natural light, followed by, in a close second, the natural light. Also, the space gets great natural light.

— Phil Ruppanner, Founder / Managing Director

Because the windows do most of the lighting work for us, we decided to keep things pretty simple from there. We left most of the original fixtures for overhead lighting and brought in a few statement pieces to add some extra flair.

A sleek Edison chandelier from West Elm hangs in our main conference room. We repurposed suspension lights from our old office to the main seating area, aka Comfort Club. The lights intersect and are hung at different heights for a modern touch. We added a couple new hanging lights in the kitchen and in the waiting area for just the right balance of old and new.

Seriously, we love our windows:

I love the airiness of our space. We have these big, beautiful windows that give us amazing light in the studio. It adds so much warmth to the space and just feels like a place I want to design in all day.

— Jessica Strelioff, Creative Director

The Kitchen

The space had started with a small kitchenette, but it was largely closed off from the rest of the studio. We wanted it to feel as bright and beautiful as the rest of the office, so we brought in some exposed top shelves (built by the lovely Studio Mrazik), updated the light fixtures, and added a modern, hexagonal tile backsplash.

Photography Studio

There’s a nice little enclave carved out of the desk space that we’ve been calling “The Photo Nook” for some time now. While we had big dreams for the space from the start, it was largely under-utilized until Evan, Art Director at UQ, joined our team and made it legit!

My favorite part of our new space is that it’s spacious, it’s fits so many desks in there and we were able to bring so many amazing new folks to our team.

Oh and have you heard about our new photo set-up? It’s awesome!

— Zhihao Wu, Developer

We’ve been able to capture some sweet shots:

Custom cabinetry and shelves flank the opposing sides where we house testing devices and anything we need to cut, paste or mock up. Large rolls of colored paper hang in the center for all our photo production needs.

The Entrance

The elevator to our floor opens to a small foyer, which used to be a giant, white wall. We know first impressions matter and we wanted our clients and visitors to feel energized upon entering our office — a place where creativity and imagination are welcomed. Bryan, one of our senior designers, saw the opportunity of turning this mega blank canvas into a super fun mural to greet our guests and we were all amazed by the result.

One of my favorite things is the colorful mural you see upon exiting the elevator into our office. Something bright and happy to greet you after a suspenseful elevator ride.

— Le Wei, Technical Director

A note from Bryan —

Inspiration for our entry mural came from a weekend trip I took to Sea Ranch in Northern California. It is a little slice of heaven built into the mountains on highway 1, bordering the California coastline. In this small community, you’ll find murals, less commonly known as “super graphics”, throughout the recreational center’s bathrooms and locker rooms. These super graphics were created by the very talented Barbara Stauffacher Solomon who is celebrated for her use of bold shapes and striking colors. Upon seeing them, I knew I wanted to do something similar for our new office, and what better place than the first wall you see when you enter our space.

The final result of the mural is a mixture of blown up shapes and patterns hand painted by the wonderful folks at New Bohemia Signs out of San Francisco.

Plants 🌵🌿🌵

A space just isn’t complete without plants, so we turned to green-thumb experts at Flora Grubb in San Francisco. They identified types of plants that would be happiest nestled up against our windows and helped make our office feel like a jungle home.

One of my favorite office is the amount of greenery. Makes the environment seem a little gentle and refreshing to the eye. I also like the idea of taking care of them even if I’m not the best at taking care of plants, but it definitely helps the space feel less industrial.

— Elliott Tran, Senior Designer

Our space has a ton of plants lined up all around the windows, and it sometimes gives me the illusion that I’m outside rather than in an office space. I love how they help blur the boundaries between work and play.

— Cecilia Uhr, Designer

We now have over 100 green friends throughout our office including about 85 snake plants along the perimeter of the main space.

Finishing Touches

Lucky for all of us, Phil, UQ’s founder and fearless leader, is obsessed with design books. Our color-filled shelves instantly brought a homey feel and allowed us to showcase some of our favorite office trinkets.

I love how open our studio is. Everyone sits together on the same floor, which makes it a super comfortable and collaborative space. When I want to run an idea by a designer or ask a developer a question, I can just roll my chair over and chat face to face.

— Danielle LaRoy, Strategist

Celebrating our first year

It took about a year to finesse the details and finish the big projects. We kicked off an official Open House during Design Week in June, 2018 to share our new space with our amazing friends and clients. Thanks to those who came, and if you missed it, be sure to check out our Design Week post.

Until next time ✌️

Upperquad is a growing team of designers, developers and producers brought together by good fortune, great clients and a shared drive to make amazing things.

Kailie Parrish is an Art Director at Upperquad who enjoys making things, travel and puppies.

Photos: Evan Corrigan, Kailie Parrish, Cecilia Uhr unless otherwise noted.

Our New Office was originally published in Upperquad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Back in June we held a happy hour at the UQ office for SF Design Week 2018. After a year of remodeling and slowly making our new office home, we were excited to invite our friends and community to come celebrate our new space. It also happened to be the perfect occasion for some creative expression in the form of an interactive projection piece.

Inspiration

Projects like this have their roots in all sorts of conversations around digital “makery” experiments. As designers and developers these experiments serve as creative outlets that let us try, test, and learn new things. They also challenge us to narrow in on just one final idea, which can often be the hardest part of all.

Lots of talking.

Lots of brainstorming.

Lots of links.

Lots of talking in circles.

Lots of saying the same thing in different ways.

Lots of fear of commitment. This was mostly due to the fact that we don’t do this everyday, so we wanted it to be cool and we wanted it to work.

In the end, an experiential, audio-visual experiment became our focus. It was the perfect opportunity to kick the tires on our new brand (the colors! the shapes!) and combine it with our interests in music to make something immersive and unexpected.

Brainstorming

The shape and pattern artwork we’ve been developing over the last few months was a key starting point for this project’s visuals. A matrix of shapes and cells quickly emerged, giving us a platform to show off our colors and setting the stage for all kinds of animation opportunities.

Randomizing our colors and shapes was an awesome way give it an always-fresh, never-quite-the-same feeling. Scale changes and explosions added another layer of personality to create a more dynamic and engaging experience.

Process

The physical, interactive part of the experiment took a lot of research and logistical planning. First, we had to figure out where to place our installation. Inspired by our conference room’s existing artwork, we decided on a triptych approach, which allowed us to place canvases where our paintings once hung.

Once we had our placement, we started construction. The first question was what to use as a base. While we initially thought photo frames might work, we were worried about how sturdy they’d be with all the touching and tapping we expected. Canvases, on the other hand, gave us everything we needed. They were easy to project onto and were much less fragile, which was a nice reassurance given that they’d make their debut at a happy hour.

In order to turn the canvas into a sensor, we needed to put something conductive on the back of it. Copper tape and conductive paint seemed like an obvious fit, but were quickly ruled out due to cost and timing. A bit of creative thinking and tinkering followed and we discovered that aluminum foil and spray mount could be our winning combination. Each canvas was divided into 4 separated sections and each section was soldered to an electrode on a Bare Conductive Touch Board. This allowed each section to serve as an individual sensor, giving us a total of 12 sensors.

Getting technical

At the heart of our project is the Touch Board by Bare Conductive. It’s an Arduino board with capacitive sensors that can detect when a surface is touched, allowing you to create interactive pieces. On the visual side of things, we used the creative coding-oriented JavaScript library p5.js to create the colorful graphics that would be touch-triggered. In order to connect the touch data we got from the Arduino board to our p5.js sketch, we used p5.serialport and p5.serialserver. Finally, the p5.sound library was used for handling audio files and playback.

Our piece cycled between two different states: a grid-based state with shapes and a more free-form state featuring diagonal lines. Everything was randomly generated within those two systems, from color and shape selections to X and Y positions. To keep the visuals cohesive across our triptych of canvases, we chose to forgo using three different <canvas> elements, instead opting for just one large <canvas> element which we split into three sections using two black <div> columns on top.

Audio

We knew audio would play a big role in bringing this installation to life. We wanted to know what sound it would make when all these little shapes jump from canvas to canvas. What does this rainbow waterfall of color sound like? We went looking for an ambient sound that could worm around your head as you experienced the space; a synesthetic element that could actually convey the sounds that the animation might make.

This was not a task for the faint of heart, so we reached out to Eric Dietrick, a talented musician and tinkerer, to help us create some samples. We sent him recordings of the animations and within a few days we received a ton of plug and play samples. All of them, of course, amazing.

Obstacles

Working with a new medium with some pretty DIY variables, we naturally ran into a few obstacles. The biggest challenge for us was to make sure our sensors sent accurate data to the p5 program. There were times when a single touch would trigger multiple sensors at once because the sensitivity threshold was too low. Other times, the sensors weren’t sensitive enough so we weren’t receiving any signals; generally this was because the foil wasn’t glued properly to the canvas, or the conductive copper wire came loose from the Touch Board. Trial and error was our friend here. A lot of trial and error.

Through the course of this experiment, we learned a lot and had a ton of fun exploring the world of hardware and AV. It was fun to share it with our friends and the design community of SF.

We’d like to give a shoutout to everyone who helped make this project possible, especially Jason Dietrick for the vision, Eric Dietrick for making the audio samples, Zhihao Wu for helping out with hardware, and Phil Ruppanner for believing in us.

Both Anya Tran and Lily Zhou are a Developers at Upperquad.

Upperquad is a growing team of designers, developers and producers brought together by good fortune, great clients and a shared drive to make amazing things. We’re hiring!

Projection Mapping Installation was originally published in Upperquad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is it too late? Definitely. 2018 has already been super busy with a lot great projects and we’re FINALLY getting to our year-end review.

Anyway, where were we? Oh right. 2017.

Is that still a thing?

Well, we’re posting this article about some of our favorite things from last year. Just in time for the 2018 to be one-twelveth over.

Nothing felt particularly momentous at the time, but there were a series of things that started adding up to a pretty amazing 2017. Contributions and efforts spread across many days, weeks and coming from everyone here at Upperquad.

We celebrated all these great things, both big and small, along the way. A lot happened. Here’s a quick rundown in a somewhat particular order.

It’s the team

What made 2017 great? The people we sit next to everyday.

The one thing we’re always most proud of about Upperquad is the group of people that work here. We have some of the most talented, smart, kind, creative, thoughtful people that you would like to meet. It’s what makes this place special.

Some amazing people joined Upperquad. We were lucky to add Anya to the dev team, Cecilia as a designer, and Danielle as a producer. Juliette and Louis were here on internships, which seemed too short, but only because they were so awesome.

Nobody — very fortunately — left. Except Bryan, who moved to Oklahoma City, where he still works full time for Upperquad and started raising spiders. We’re not sure if that’s slang for something? Bryan, if you are reading this, please move back to SF.

We did some fun stuff together, like going bowling and riding roller coasters. Some of us made it down to Los Angeles for the Awwwards Conference, while others went to Sydney to work on another year of Google Santa Tracker (and made a stop in Tokyo on the way back) and still others went to London to collaborate on 3D renders. Traveling is fun.

And, as the number of people here grows, we took the time to write down some of our philosophy of work and working. But that’s something you can read in another post. It’s like a whole thing.

Making things for good

With a particularly turbulent world in 2017, we wanted to make things that were meaningful to us and positively reflect our values.

After back-to-back-to-back hurricanes, a massive earthquake and wildfires, we wanted to do soemthing to help those in need. We were humbled when a group of the designers and artists who we admire most agreed to contribute their work to the Beacon Relief Effort. You can buy posters or — if you can’t decide — you can get the 46 different posters as postcards. All the proceeds from the project go to Direct Relief.

Also, we volunteered to work with 826 Valencia to completely redesign their website. They are some amazing people doing really good things and look for something there soon.

Jessica designed a limited edition print to celebrate women everywhere for International Women’s Day. We sent the print to some of our favorite women out there, including designers, illustrators, and friends (and our moms).

Bryan also designed some stickers to promote love and peace for all people, everywhere. We gave them away to anyone who wanted one and sent a few to friends all over the world.

Remaking and rebranding Upperquad

We finally took the time to launch a new Upperquad.com and, in the process, developed an entirely new approach to our brand. It was real soul-searching process that took place over a period of several brow-furrowing, debate-filled, endlessly iterative months.

Relaunching our own website challenged us to think long and hard about our brand — about what it means to be a creative digital studio and what we wanted to say about ourselves to the world.

On the one hand, we wanted to let our work speak for itself, so some of the early designs focused on case studies and photography. On the other hand, this was a chance to articulate our unique perspective and our culture; it was a real balancing act to find a way to explore our creative bounds without distracting from our work.

We got some appreciation for our all the hard work, getting recognition from the FWA, Awwwards, CommArts and MindSparkle. Plus a whole lot of love online and from our friends.

New work

A lot of what launched in 2017 was actually the culmination of a lot of work from the previous year. We had been waiting eagerly for it all to go live. But, once it did, it was worth the wait.

Some of the sites that launched worth celebrating: This is Bears Ears, Stanford d.school, Chromebooks, Santa Tracker, Facebook Creators, Tiltbrush AIR. We were seriously pretty busy.

We got some recognition for the work we did from CommArts, the FWA and Awwwards. But, more importantly than the awards, we did great work that our clients could be proud of and feel good about.

New office

We moved in 2017!

After almost 7 years on Divisadero Street, it was time to say goodbye to our very first and only office space to move to our new HQ just off Union Square. We miss our old neighborhood, but are enjoying finding all the great lunch and coffee spots around.

Oh. We filled the space with plants. Lots and lots of plants. Like a ridiculous number of plants.

Bryan designed a mural for the entrance that we got the amazingly talented people at New Bohemia to paint. Kailie, Bryan, Wyatt and Andy all worked really hard to make the new spot sparkle ✨, chosing all the fixtures and furniture.

Come visit!

Here’s to an amazing 2017

And an even better 2018.

Upperquad is a growing team of designers, developers and producers brought together by good fortune, great clients and a shared drive to make amazing things.

Phil Ruppanner is the founder and managing director of Upperquad, works hard and is generally a pretty nice guy I hear.

This article originally appeared in a series on Instagram: here, here, here, here, here and here. Follow us for more fun things. Oh, and Upperquad is hiring!

2017 at Upperquad was originally published in Upperquad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wow, it’s been a tough year — Hurricanes Harvey and Irma wrecked coastal communities a mere weeks apart. An earthquake shook Mexico City one day before Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico. Close to home, wildfires burned through thousands of California acres. Puerto Rico still doesn’t have power restored. The hits seem to keep coming, leaving communities reeling and families left trying to pick up whatever pieces they have left. Tough is an understatement.

At Upperquad these back-to-back-to-back disaster events have weighed heavily on our hearts. We wanted to help. Together, with the help of dozens artists from all over the world, we built and launched Beacon, a collaborative design project to raise money for the ongoing disaster relief efforts. The result is a beautiful digital gallery, an expression of our combined hopes, thoughts and prayers for the communities facing impossible circumstances.

But Beacon wasn’t Beacon when we first started a few months ago. Back then, Hurricane Harvey had just hit and it seemed like all of Houston was underwater. News reports over the next few days said parts of Texas could be uninhabitable for months due to water damage and mold. I asked Bryan Couchman (a designer here, and Texas expat) what he was thinking and if he might want to make a poster or do something to help. In the meantime, Irma was starting to develop in the Atlantic and rumored to be another Category 5 monster preparing to wreak havoc on our shore. “Holy cow, not again” — another dumbstruck understatement. So we decided to make some posters.

Looking back, we didn’t really have a plan. We thought we’d make a couple images, donate what we could to a few local organizations and share our thoughts with friends and family. But Bryan’s a genius and worked up a few ideas really quickly. We showed the studio his sketches to get some early reactions and Marcio Gutheil jumped in right away with another poster. The big idea quickly presented itself: let’s all make posters and reach out to our design friends to see if they’d be interested in doing the same. We could collect them in an online gallery and encourage people to visit, reflect on the recent hurricanes and ultimately make a donation to help those in need.

From that early vision, we developed our mission statement and really kicked things off:

As communities around the world struggle to recover from back-to-back hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires, we search for ways to support one another and heal together. Beacon is a collaborative design project meant to reflect on these disasters, create art amidst tragedy and raise money for the people affected by these recent and ongoing environmental disasters

(more at beaconrelief.com/#about)

We squeezed a lot into this mission statement; it’s a poignant encapsulation of the project and a heartfelt description of what we set out to make. But it’s also a meditative statement on the expansiveness and limitations of art in the wake of historic events.

Now, I realize the notion of using posters as a solution to real problems is probably at best naive thinking and at worst a graphic design cliché. But posters have a long history in political action. They’re designed to spread ideas, motivate and inspire. Maybe I’m sentimental, but I grew up with “A Poster Can Change the World” philosophy. I still find it a noble pursuit and an avenue to channel powerful thoughts and feelings about the goings on of the world around us. Over time, I’ve come to understand that at the very least, it’s a natural reaction to want to put your thoughts on paper; as a designer it’s even more natural that those thoughts take form in 24 x 36 inches of paper. Our images often shout louder then our voices do, and it can be one of the ways we process tragedy and (hopefully) help others do the same.

So we got to work. The first step was finding an organization that we felt confident could support these cities both in the short term and in the long run — we could already see that it would be a long and trying road ahead. The organization needed to be equipped to operate in communities with damaged infrastructure and limited federal resources. We wanted them to function like a local organization, but somehow support these international efforts. We were thrilled to find Direct Relief — California’s largest international humanitarian nonprofit. They’re uniquely poised to help in these situations, as they specialize in emergency response and disaster relief around the world. They provide medical assistance to improve the health and lives of people affected by disaster, working through a massive network of local partners in each area who are able to assess the situation, respond to immediate needs, and rebuild healthcare systems in the affected areas.

With an amazing organization in mind, we reached out to our networks to try and make this a reality. I also asked our team to suggest their favorite designers and artists — those who inspire us, those we admire, those who do thoughtful and surprising work. Then we did the most brazen thing we could think of: we asked them for their help.

To our surprise, people were eager to lend a hand. Volunteering original work is no small ask of a creative, especially on a tight deadline alongside a heavy load of year-end work. We all had client work to consider and it can be tough to balance out the immediacy of the moment with the time it takes to actually make the work. The desire to make something good takes time and care, but news cycles move so fast. In the meantime, recovery efforts were underway after both hurricanes.

Then came Maria, a triple-punch to the gut.

Puerto Rico looked like it was wiped out. News got worse and worse as power couldn’t be restored and hospitals were shut down. “Not again, not again, not again” kept reverberating in our heads. I could feel it in the studio. I could read it in our correspondence with artists. Some folks had family in Puerto Rico that they couldn’t get in touch with. There was a renewed urgency to what we were doing.

We launched the website with about 27 posters just as the wildfires took off in California, right in our backyard. Mother Nature was unceasing and now our world was literally on fire. “Not again, not again, not again.”

Beacon is an ever-evolving project. Our store opened last week, allowing visitors to purchase posters from the site, with all proceeds going to Direct Relief. We’re closing in on 50 posters, with new additions coming in seemingly every week. We have posters about floods, fires, destruction, healing and rebirth. It’s a touching collection of heartbreak and hope.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving there are so many people that deserve our gratitude: I’m thankful to Bryan Couchman for starting this snowball. Thanks to him also for the wonderful identity work for Beacon. I’m thankful to Danielle LaRoy for finding Direct Relief, for her wonderful writing and for spearheading this project. I’m thankful for Emmanuelle Bories for designing our beautiful gallery. I’m thankful to Lily Zhou and Le Wei for developing a beautiful site as quickly as we asked them to. I’m thankful for Anya Tran and Emmanuelle again for their continued diligence in getting the shop working. I’m thankful for all of our staff who graciously reached out to their peers to recruit such amazing work: Bryan and Emma (again), Marcio Gutheil, Jessica Strelioff, Kailie Parrish, Elliott Tran, Cecilia Uhr and Wyatt Berry. I’m also thankful to them for making wonderful posters. Thank you gang, I’m proud of you all. I’m thankful to Hemlock Printing for generously printing the postcard collection (available soon!). I’m thankful to Phil Ruppanner for making such a generous donation to the project, giving us the time and space to work on this and bringing Upperquad together in the first place.

And most of all, I’m thankful for such beautiful posters by these beautiful people:

APAK (Aaron Piland & Ayumi Kajikawa), Adam R. Garcia, Anthony Morell, Bailey Sullivan, Bryan Couchman, Cecilia Uhr, Chris Gash, Chris Markland, Dangerdom, Elliott Tran, Emmanuelle Bories, Frederique Matti, Gabriella Sanchez, Globe Collection and Press at MICA, Grace Ho, Jeanne Carlier, Jessica Strelioff, John J. Custer, Josiah Zimmerman, Justin Colt, Justin Kemerling, Kailie Parrish, Kelsey Wroten, Lanny & Kristin Sommese, Marcio Gutheil, Mark Weaver, Matt Carlson, Matt Stevens, Mattiel Brown, Michael Malowanczyk, Midge Sinnaeve, Mike McNeive, Morgane Sanglier, Niya Spasova, Pinky Abraham, Ramis Khawaja, Richard Perez & Jen DeRosa, Ricky Linn, Ryan Hubbard, Scott Boms, Seth Eckert, Tim Belonax, Tommy Perez, Trevor Van Meter, Ty Wilkins and Zach Stubenvoll.

Thank you, thank you, thank you all for your generous contributions. This project is nothing without your work.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge and sincerely thank the servicemen and women, the volunteers and the good people on the ground in these areas who are doing the real work day in and day out to help these cities recover. Thank you.

And finally, I’m thankful to you for reading this article. Please visit beaconrelief.com and consider buying a poster or making a donation. Every little bit helps.

Upperquad is a growing team of designers, developers and producers brought together by good fortune, great clients and a shared drive to make amazing things.

Jason Dietrick is creative director @UPPERQUAD.

Beacon, a Disaster Relief Project was originally published in Upperquad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’ve ever visited Tokyo, you know how tough it is to describe just how much the city has to offer. The food is incredible, people are kind and the city is bustling with energy. And if that isn’t enough to pique your interest, they have just about every kind of animal cafe you could imagine — a delightful and unexpected treat for those of us first-time visitors.

A few of us visited Tokyo to cap off our annual hack week with Google, where we worked on Santa Tracker 2017. When we got back and combined all of our photos from the trip, we realized that a good 80% were pictures of the food we ate, so we thought we’d share some of our favorites:

1. Fuunji Ramen

Being from San Francisco — an unapologetically line-loving city — we knew we had found the right place when we saw a line of people waiting outside the restaurant, stretching across the street and around the corner.

Thankfully, it was well worth the wait. This place turned out to be the best ramen any of us have ever had.

We all ordered the Tsukemen or dipping ramen. The noodles were thicker than your average ramen and they come served cold on a large plate, separate from the broth. It’s tough to describe what exactly made this ramen perfect, but the flavor was unreal. Highly recommend.

2. Sushi Fukumoto

We stayed near this 1 Michelin star sushi restaurant, which turned out to be a wonderful stroke of luck. Situated in the basement of an unassuming building, Sushi Fukumoto is a tiny room with only 8 seats, 1 chef and 1 waitress. The counter seats allowed us to watch as the chef prepared our 13-piece Omakase (chef’s choice).

The whole dinner was mesmerizing. We watched the chef prepare each piece like a work of art and we used their beautifully drawn binder of sushi illustrations to follow along with each course.

Adding to the experience, we sat next to a kind Japanese couple who were very helpful translating for us, as well. In a fun twist to the story, we later found out that they were famous — Teru Sekiguchi, an award-winning photographer and Keiko Takeshita, a famous actress.

The meal ended with warm tea and miso soup. It was a lovely experience and the food was amazing!

3. A Happy Pancake

If the name doesn’t sell it, I hope the pictures do. A must if you like sweet, delicious, fluffy, amazing pancakes. We went for brunch, but these sugary snacks could also pass for dessert :)

4. Hiroshima Fuokonomiyaki Asuka

This savory pancake was absurdly satisfying. The base is made with layered batter, cabbage and fried noodles which sets the stage for the delicious toppings. Highlights were the perfectly fried egg and the aioli sauce drizzle. Pairs well with Sake.

5. Toritake

This restaurant was crowded and for good reason — there’s a wide variety of incredible food. We ordered an assortment of veggie and meat skewers, with my personal favorites being the duck and the quail eggs. They give you the option to get it salty or saucy, and while both are good choices, sauce is the way to go. The beer is tasty too and comes in large or extra large mugs.

6. Bread, Espresso &

One surprise of the trip was the french toast (first image). It’s thicker, eggier and super yummy. I ordered the weekend brunch set: 4 kinds of bread, seasonal vegetables, quiche and a full set of cheese. Don’t forget to take home a square-shaped loaf of bread!

7. Albatross

We liked this eclectic bar so much that we actually ended up here twice on our trip. You’ll find it nestled in the alley of Golden Gai. The alley is as wide as a sidewalk, strung with lights and filled with people, restaurants and bars. It’s a pretty unusual experience, but unusual in a good way. It had multiple floors, good service and great drinks. Not to mention, the decor is dope.

These places were great too…

Row 1: Tsukiji Fish Market and Sushi Katsura at the Fish Market
Row 2: Ramen Nagi Shimokitazawa
Row 3: Nine Pancake House, Freeman Cafe and 梅窓
Row 4: Tsurutontan Roppongi

Upperquad is a growing team of designers, developers and producers brought together by good fortune, great clients and a shared drive to make amazing things.

Kailie Parrish is a senior designer at Upperquad who enjoys making things, travel and puppies.

A week in Tokyo was originally published in Upperquad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.