Youngme Moon of the Harvard Business School collaborated with XPLANE to create this video introducing her new book, DIFFERENT, an intimately drawn meditation on the meaning of business differentiation.
Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to do client work on an infography, but it seems to be one of the most challenging task for a graphic designer. The perfect infography must synthesize complex information in a simple visual representation, which is not easy. The following examples take information architecture to another level by making it beautiful.
In case you missed it, last month we sent out our 2009/2010 holiday greeting. Actually, it was more “greeting” than “holiday” — and maybe more “beating” than “greeting!” Why? because we went ahead and poked some fun at a lot of those empty business clichés that get thrown around in meetings, emails and corporate conversations.
So go ahead and download it, hang it up by the water cooler, leave it on someone’s desk… ;-)
Later this month we’ll be sending out an interactive PDF with all of the clichés identified and defined. Sign up for our email newsletter if you’d like to get a copy.
The David Rumsey Map Collection has now been online for ten years. [This] selection of carto-curios is from the latest batch of material uploaded to the site.
Rumsey is an internet hero of the first order. Following the success of his business he was able to afford to indulge his latent interest for all things cartographic and he assembled a massive collection of more than 150,000 items.
That might have been the end of the story: rich dude spends money on secret passion in obscurity. But Rumsey wanted to share his collection with the world and mere donation of his maps and atlases to a document repository didn’t seem like it would fully satisfy his magnanimous urges. From a five year old interview on SFGate: “I realized that whichever institution I gave it to would lock it away, put it on a shelf,” he says, with mild indignation. “But just then the technology came along that would enable me to put it all up online, and it was obvious that this was the best way I could give it away to the public.”
For the second time in recent months XPLANE has partnered with The Economist to create a compelling video on a topic of global importance. After working together on “Did You Know? 4.0”, The Economist enlisted XPLANE’s visual communication expertise to develop “The Carbon Economy” about the growing importance of climate change and green technologies and solutions.
“The Carbon Economy” will be shown at The Economist’s upcoming Carbon Economy Summit on November 17 and 18, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The video is three minutes in length and includes simple visuals and a moving soundtrack to clearly convey the troubled state of global climate change and what steps must be taken to reach a positive outcome. The production was created using Apple’s Keynote software.
The David Allen Company: “If you ever feel like you need to get more in control or regain your focus, here is the ultimate guide for getting and staying on your game. The set of productivity best practices which David Allen has researched and synthesized over the last three decades are brought all together into one stunning visual display — the GTD Workflow Map. It’s a rich compilation of the key steps for gathering, clarifying, organizing, and reviewing everything you need to track and manage, as well as an explanation of all of the factors that you must take into account in determining priorities.”
“I spent more than two years crafting and fine-tuning the map, ensuring that it would thoroughly and accurately describe the essential elements of time- and self-management,” says David, “It’s as simple as I could get it, while still embodying the subtleties and complexities that have to be factored in, to make it real and useful. And the visual representation we’ve come up with I think is a highly effective way to make something this meaningful really clear.”
The poster was created by XPLANE, the visual thinking company. Visit www.xplane.com to learn more about how XPLANE clarifies complex business issues through visual collaboration.
Since typography is one of the most challenging and important aspects of web design, it’s important to have useful tools that can make things easier. Here’s a list of tools that will be a big help in making your typography beautiful, and you won’t even have to leave your browser.
Designers everywhere are suddenly drooling over this 70-year-old book. Including me.
Someone needs to get me a paper copy of Willard Cope Brinton’s Graphic Presentation (1939), because it is awesome.
Brinton discusses various forms of graphic presentation in the 524-page book and what works and what doesn’t. There’s also some good stuff in there about how to make your graphs, charts, maps, etc (by hand).
The most interesting part is that many of the graphics — despite having no computers in 1939 — look a lot like what we have today. Albeit, they’re a little rougher because they’re made by hand, but that’s just added flavor.
XPLANE is happy to present Did You Know 4.0 — another official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.
As Garr Reynolds mentions over at Presentation Zen this morning, yes, this project was created with “off-the-shelf slideware” (Keynote and GarageBand, actually, along with Photoshop and Illustrator). Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Design and development by XPLANE.
ou present the work with the too-small logo, and the client explains that its size must be increased. Don’t argue. Instead, listen very carefully, nodding, drawing out detail and nuance. Make it clear that this is a matter of importance and complexity, and the client is right to focus on it. Finally, announce, as if it’s just then occurring to you, that there is only one way to get this exactly right, to make sure that the client is absolutely pleased. You will prepare not one, but five options, changing the size of the logo on each one just ever so slightly….
Works of art in and of themselves, these ancient maps reveal a great deal more than the geographical knowledge of our ancestors. They tell stories of war and triumph, reveal myths and biases, and document modes of thought that have long been obsolete.
» Posted September 1, 2009 @ 8am PDT
» Archived in History, Mapping » Comments: (2)
“The significance of trade-marks in the textile industry is, perhaps, greater than in any other industry of equal magnitude,” wrote V. Alexander Scher (no relation to Paula or Jeff) of Richards & Geier, patent and trademark attorneys, New York City. He was writing in a now forgotten book titled Textile Brand Names Dictionary, which was published in 1947, designed “to be of daily service in identifying the names already in use, thereby facilitating the choice and registering of new names and marks,” asserted the editor at the Textile Book Publishers Inc. Included were more than 4,000 names of fibers, yarns, fabrics, and garments registered with the United States Patent Office between 1934 and 1947. 4,000!!! That’s a lot of 7th Avenue brainstorming to devise names like Devogue, Denicron, Glritone, Glossitwist, Ma-Tex, Perma-Fluff, Permacrisp, Perma glaze, Permaglo, Perma-Seal, Permaset, Perma-Shade and Permoflex, to name a few (today they could double as rock band or design firm names).
When I first started to design Baseline, I wanted to base the grid on the work of Josef Müller-Brockmann, unfortunately some missing CSS attribute — like type leading — kept me from implementing a true grid based approach. I then decided to look back at the basic grid that is used in print: the baseline grid.
» Posted August 20, 2009 @ 10am PDT
» Archived in CSS, Typography, Web design » Comments: Comments Off
Whether you are designing for print or for the web, making the leap from what you see on your computer screen to the outside world can be a tricky process, fraught with unpredictable changes and unexpected results. The web is full of information regarding color management and sifting through it can be very overwhelming. Contradictory opinions abound and it can be difficult to find reliable sources of information.
Over the last few months, Scott and I have been researching this topic extensively [and] we have implemented a color management system that works for us. Below we have tried to aggregate this knowledge into a simple and useful guide, designed to help you ensure your studio is set up correctly. It is not intended to be the end-all article on color management by any means — but it’s a good place to start if color management isn’t something you have previously implemented or considered.
