“Are you a visual thinker? Do you want to hone your visual thinking skills? Do you want to learn from some of the best in our industry? Then the Visual Thinking Workshop is for you! VizThink is offering a series of one-day workshops all around the United States. These workshops will help you improve your visual thinking skills. The first workshop series will be run by Dave Gray and Karl Gude.

Apparently separated at birth, together they will show you how to visualize your ideas so you can think and communicate with greater clarity and effectiveness. Working individually and in small teams, you will learn and practice visualization techniques that have been successfully used to improve innovation and accelerate change at some of the world’s leading companies. After completing this workshop you will have a toolkit for thinking and presentation effectiveness — your presentations of complex information and strategies will never be the same.”

XPLANE continues to grow and we’re looking for project managers for the Portland and Atlanta offices. You can find job descriptions at http://www.xplane.com/#/careers/.

Check out this new video from XPLANE, demonstrating the impact of mobile marketing. If you’d like to share via mobile devices, use this link: http://www.canalwap.com/xplane/.

“Bringing together leaders in visual thinking for the first time in one location, the VizThink ‘08 Conference (http://www.vizthink.com) is an opportunity for executives to understand ways of incorporating visualization processes into business, learning and communications strategies to gain faster and more effective results. Hosted by Portland, Ore. based VizThink LLC, the conference will include breakout sessions and forums facilitated by some of the most recognized names in the visual thinking space, including the distinguished Bob Horn from Stanford University, renowned author and artist Scott McCloud, award winning designer Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design, most notably known for her work in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and Nigel Holmes formerly with Time magazine. The conference will be held at the Westin San Francisco Market Street Hotel from January 27-29. Registration (http://www.vizthink.com/reg.html) is open now.”

This week, the newly formed XPLANE Press achieved its first milestone: The reprinting of Bob Horn’s classic book Visual Language. Horn’s book makes the case that visual language is truly an emerging international language, and – like all languages – it has an inherent order, syntax, and grammar that can be learned and applied. While the world of information design has come a long way in the 10 years since Visual Language was first published, the book’s core message remains relevant today.

Visual Language has been out of print for the last few years, but is now back on the market via the XPLANE store. We will soon be offering it on Amazon as well, where used copies have been selling for upwards of $100.

The list features the fastest-growing companies in America…

What it does: Consulting and design firm that helps companies drive better, faster business results through visual communication.
Why it’s growing: Client list includes 35 of the Fortune 500, including Autodesk, Boeing, BP, Apple, Microsoft and Nike.
What’s noteworthy: Has developed a culture map to guide their thinking and decisions, so they can keep the spirit of the company alive as they grow, says CEO David Gray.

XPLANE founder and CEO Dave Gray will be giving a visual thinking workshop in Toronto on September 8: “The title of the workshop will be ‘The Power of Pictonics: Using Visualizations to Tell Your Technology Story.’ I am really looking forward to this. There will be plenty of hands-on exercises to help you hone your visual thinking and storytelling skills. You’ll also learn some of the ’secret sauce’ that goes into making visual explanations. This will be a pretty special event, to be held in the beautiful and hi-tech MaRS convergence and innovation center in the downtown Discovery District. It also happens to coincide with the Toronto film festival, one of the best film festivals in North America in my opinion. So if you’ve been meaning to visit Toronto you couldn’t pick a better time.”

“A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a pictogram is worth so much more… A good BoND [Back of the Napkin Diagram] can also assist with employee recruitment, team alignment, sales and technology build outs. The vocal [Rick] Segal comments, that ‘As the prospective client, employee, or VC engages, both parties can use the drawing as a central reference point. It’s a very useful tool that is often overlooked in favour of mountains of text laden painful power point slides.’ In fact, BoNDs can be used throughout the business, according to the Grandfather of business visualizations, Dave Gray, Founder and CEO of XPLANE (the business visualization company behind the powerful BoNDs you see in Business 2.0 magazine).”

“Yi-Tan means conversations about change. On Monday, May 14th, [XPLANE founder and CEO Dave Gray] will join Jerry Michalski on his weekly Yi-Tan call to discuss how visual thinking is changing the way interact and communicate. The topic: how to build shared visual meaning inside a company. We’ll discuss…”

“Dave Gray is productive. This man puts out more graphics in more media than a graffiti tagger with a hardware store full of paint. Besides inventing his own visual language (you do that in your spare time, right?), Dave has written a book, taught class in the physical world, started a visual thinking school, and landed a spot in the Top 10 popular lenses at Seth Godin’s Squidoo project. Dave was kind enough to give me an interview recently, and there’s lots to cover.”

“Customers are banging our doors down. The demand for our work is growing, and we need quality people to join our growing company. This post is about consultants: the people who lead our teams and manage customer relationships…”

XPLANE is a communications design firm that specializes in making complex business issues easier to understand. Our information design is recognized around the world and we are looking for smart, creative and passionate people to join our team.

We are currently looking to fill two positions.

Production Manager
You’ll help to manage and grow the production side of our creative department. Ideal candidate will have at least five years experience in print design and digital imagery. We want someone who is highly skilled in the following programs: Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Powerpoint, Excel, and Word. CSS, HTML and Flash ability would be a plus. We want people who can handle anything.

Concept Developer
You’ll work with high-level business executives to help shape the look and feel of their visual communications. We’re looking for highly creative designers who take just as much satisfaction in problem-solving and storytelling as they do in the final aesthetic. Our creatives take an active part in client contact and you will have many opportunities for travel both in the U.S. and Europe.

We offer full benefits along with a salary that is commensurate with AIGA guidelines. Must be willing to relocate.

Please submit resume AND a few of your best samples to the email linked above. No phone calls please.

New weblog by XPLANE CEO and Founder Dave Gray: “Communication is one of the most important skills anyone can have, in business and in life. As individuals and as a species, I believe we will be both happier and more productive if we can improve our ability to communicate. This blog is dedicated to that effort.”

XPLANE founder Dave Gray will be speaking at an IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) luncheon Thursday, December 16, in St. Louis, Mo. The topic is effectiveness in business communication. “Selling as a discipline does have informal communities of practice, from which there is much we can learn. I will be talking about how these lessons can be leveraged in other business areas, such as marketing, crisis management, change management and continuous improvement, not to mention your own career development and social skills.”

is the new book by XPLANE founder Dave Gray. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a manager or a saleperson in the trenches, this book is for you. View sample pages and order online at posted in Sales, XPLANE | Permalink | Comments Off