Storyboard Central

Lots of quick tips, trick, profiles and samples over at Storyboard Central.

Part ‘History of’, part showcase, part bitch fest… a place for those interested in the fine art of the comp and storyboard — especially as they are used in advertising.



XPLANE joins Dachis Group

The acquisition was announced this morning — this is exciting news for all of us!

More info here: Dachis Group acquires XPLANE and be sure to check out the buzz on Twitter.



Touch Gesture Reference Guide

Well, this looks quite nice.

The Touch Gesture Reference Guide is a unique set of resources for software designers and developers working on touch-based user interfaces.

The guide contains: 1) an overview of the core gestures used for most touch commands 2) how to utilize these gestures to support major user actions 3) visual representations of each gesture to use in design documentation and deliverables 4) an outline of how popular software platforms support core touch gestures.



Inside Pixar’s Leadership

Haven’t watched this yet but very much looking forward to it after reading some excerpts over at Scott Berkun’s blog.

There were plenty of high profile people at the Economist event in March, but hands down the best session was a simple interview with Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar.

Martin Giles from the Economist did the interview, and did an excellent job letting Catmull cover some excellent territory…

Interesting, related to the talk I gave on The Myths of Innovation at the same event, how little he used the word innovation (I don’t think he says it once).



Similarities

Great set of design accidents, homages, inspirations and appropriations.

The pairs of images in this “Similarities” set are similar visually in one way or another. They are presented without judgement as to the motives of their creators. The viewers of the pieces can form their own opinion(s) about what they see.



The Vignelli Twelve

Thoughts from I love typography

Though I have the utmost respect for Massimo Vignelli, and am a fan of his work, his we use too many typefaces is just plain wrong. It’s by no means the first time Vignelli has voiced these views…

For any designer to claim that a half-dozen or a dozen typefaces is enough — well that’s their prerogative. However, it’s one thing to say ‘twelve typefaces is enough for me’, but to claim ‘twelve typefaces is enough’, period; extrapolating a generalisation from a personal imposition is rarely, if ever helpful.



“Different” by Youngme Moon

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.



Information is beautiful: 30 examples of creative infography

A quick roundup of some recent information design projects seen around the web:

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.



Business clichés visual find-it poster

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.

Happy new year, everyone!



Assorted Infotoons by lunchbreath

I love these funny graphics — they’re kind of like a cross between Goopy and Indexed.

Be absolutely sure to check out Mindmapping.

(Via Chris Glass)



Victorian Infographics

Check out this sampling of beautiful vintage information design over at the always-excellent BibliOdyssey:

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.”



New project: The Carbon Economy

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.

For more information on The Carbon Economy Summit, visit http://carboneconomy.economist.com.



David Allen releases The Ultimate GTD Workflow Map, designed by XPLANE

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.



14 Best Online Typography Tools for Web Designers

Style, convert units, search, identify, preview, etc. Lots of resources for working with type on the web:

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.



Vintage Infographics From the 1930s

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.