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.
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.
Information design firm broadens global presence with fourth location
XPLANE, a global information design consultancy, announces the opening of a new studio in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The new office represents XPLANE’s strong growth in Northern Europe and desire to have a closer presence with key customers. The full-service studio will offer consulting, design, project management and sales capabilities.
The Amsterdam studio will officially open on April 1 and is led by Peter de Wit, director of business development, EMEA. The seasoned client services team in Amsterdam includes existing XPLANE employees who are relocating to Europe as well as new, local talent. By bringing current XPLANE team members to Amsterdam, XPLANE is ensuring cultural, process and methodology alignment across its locations.
“For years we have planned on expanding into Amsterdam and are thrilled to have it become a reality,” said Aric Wood, chief executive officer, XPLANE. “Amsterdam’s large creative talent pool, as well as its close proximity with many of our EMEA customers, made it a perfect location for an XPLANE studio.”
Current EMEA clients include Shell, Royal Mail Group, Bank of England, Hewlett Packard, BP, SunGard and Nokia. Headquartered in Portland, Ore., XPLANE also operates offices in St. Louis, Mo. and Madrid, Spain.
About XPLANE
Founded in 1993, XPLANE is an information design consultancy that drives better results for many of the world’s leading organizations including Microsoft, Intel, BP, Nokia, ITT, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Directorate of National Intelligence through visual thinking and design. XPLANE offers clients unique and personalized service through its employees’ diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise, including journalism, consulting, technology, marketing, training, illustration, interaction, process improvement, information design and architecture. Global XPLANE headquarters are in Portland, Ore. USA; European headquarters are in Madrid, Spain; additional locations are in St. Louis, Mo. and Amsterdam, Netherlands. www.xplane.com
For more information contact:
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.
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.
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!
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)
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.”
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.
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.
Check out this video we made for Kronos to help celebrate International Women's Day, 2011. Learn more in this xBlog post or jump over to YouTube and watch it there.
XPLANE | Dachis Group developed a A vibrant, engaging poster showing how Microsoft Azure enables developers to run applications and store data on Microsoft servers. The poster recently took top honors in the American Business Awards.
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