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Business of design

Ideas and links about working in the world of design.

xBlog → Collaboratory

As you probably know, XPLANE is now Dachis Group. We are integrating everything as the year closes out — xBlog included.

On the heels of our post celebrating 4,383 days online (that’s 12 internet years!), I want to let everyone know that we’ll be importing key posts into Dachis Group’s Collaboratory blog, and we’ll continue publishing our thoughts and work on visual thinking there. In fact, my first post went up yesterday and other XPLANE alumnus have started blogging there as well.

We won’t be transferring all 8,333 xBlog posts. So many of them are outdated and linkrotted. But we will make sure key posts redirect to their new homes on the Collaboratory and all other posts don’t 404.

It has been a wonderful, amazing, enlightening ride here at xBlog, from hand-coding it starting in 1999, to embracing the first release of WordPress .7 in 2003, to today — a world where blogs are more than commonplace — they are ubiquitous. I don’t know that I could give a better rundown than I did for last year’s 11th anniversary, so if you want a trip down xBlog’s memory lane you can read it here.

Blogging has been core to me and XPLANE for a long time and we’re not going to stop. I truly hope XPLANE’s fans and xBlog’s readers will continue to follow our work as Dachis Group. We’ll still be doing that visual thinking thing, just as we have been for all these years, only now we’ll be bringing to it many more people and businesses.

So on behalf of xBlog… so long, and thanks for all the links.

See you at the Collaboratory.

Cheers,
Bill Keaggy
November 19, 2011




SVA Impact: Design for Social Change

I recently came across this really great six week program happening this summer in NYC. Impact: Design for Social Change is for a great place for creatives and all professionals who are seeking for ways to create social change within design strategies. It’s really good to look into initiatives like this — not just because it’s obviously inspiring, but also it pushes us proactively.

This is from a PDF you can download on their site:

This is a program at a level on par with graduate studies. The intensive offers advanced students and working professionals a unique opportunity to study with faculty composed of leading designers and social entrepreneurs. In addition, weekly lectures and field trips will allow students to directly interact with a dynamic range of innovators in the field.

This is a rapidly growing area of design. This program will instill in participants the confidence, self-motivation and collaborative spirit which will be needed as they continue on to work as design activists.

Professionals, educators and advanced students in the following disciplines are invited to participate: advertising, graphic design, product design, information design, interactive design, fashion design, photography and illustration. The program is oriented towards these design disciplines but we have had architects and social entrepreneurs participate

Posted by Christy Lee Zilka on Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 at 10:55 am
Also published in Graphic design, Leadership, Learning, Sustainability | comments (0)



In our DNA


Doors + file cabinets = Desks! XPLANE circa early 2000s.

When I was combing through dusty hard drives and ancient project folders the other week looking for that old Robonaut XPLANATiON, I found an old text file (saved in BBEdit!) called “Core values: Things we believe in.”

It came from conversations and emails with Dave Gray, XPLANE’s founder. It was shared with all employees, even back when we were just five or six people working on desks made of doors and file cabinets. I’m pretty sure it dates to 1999…
Read more »

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Monday, March 7th, 2011 at 6:37 pm
Also published in Business issues, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, XPLANE news | comments (1)



A love letter to Designers

I bet you thought we forgot all about Valentine’s Day.

We didn’t.

A love letter to Designers from XPLANE on Vimeo.

Dear future XPLANE Designer,

We may not have met yet, but I suspect you’ll receive this letter as if it’s a call from a wayward kindred spirit. See, we’ve got this magic chemistry that’s precious and rare. In short, I’m looking for you. More directly, the world needs you.

First, let me tell you that XPLANE is unlike anywhere you’ve worked before. We give respect to Design by using it as a proper noun. We’re neither an advertising agency nor a marketing group — we’re a consultative Design studio wherein Designers employ the arts of listening, strategizing, creating and presenting on a daily basis.

Now that I have your attention, please allow me a few moments to tell you why you’re so very special.

Read more »

Posted by XPLANE on Monday, February 14th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Also published in Communications, Creativity, Graphic design, Infodesign & graphics, Interaction design, Interface design, XPLANE news | comments (2)



An open letter to job-seeking designers

As XPLANE’s Director of Design I’ve plowed through thousands of résumés from young designers looking for work, and I must admit it’s starting to take a toll on me. Each time I sift through a pile of applications or portfolio samples I wish I could have given that person a little coaching beforehand to give them a better chance of moving forward in the process — or at least save some of their time.

So with graduation just around the corner and this economy being what it is, I figured it was a good time to reach out and give you a few things to think about as you apply for your next job… hopefully with us. We’re hiring.

The job posting
We put a lot of thought into what we say in our job postings. We do this in the hope that you’ll read through the qualifications and only apply if you meet our criteria. So please make sure that your skills and experience fit well with what we do. We take complex, messy information and make it understandable. You do too? Great! Let’s talk. No? I’ll just push the button under my desk that makes the trap door open.

Read more »

Posted by W. Scott Matthews on Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Also published in Communications, Graphic design, Infodesign & graphics, XPLANE | comments (2)



The official Gamestorming video

As you may remember, a few months ago Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers hit shelves. Today, I’m excited to share with you a new XPLANE video that offers a sneak peek into the inner-makings of the book and why it is so unique, and useful, in today’s business world. The three-minute video, created by our ever-brilliant creative team, can be seen on both Vimeo and YouTube:

For the most part, the video was created with markers, whiteboards, sticky notes, paper and other “low-tech” tools commonly used in Gamestorming.

Written by XPLANE founder and business design mastermind, Dave Gray, XPLANE consultant James Macanufo and Sunni Brown of Bright Spot Information Design, Gamestorming is a collection of 80 games to help teams break down barriers, communicate better, and generate new ideas, insights, and strategies.

Read more »




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).

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Also published in Creativity, Movies & motion | comments (0)



“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.

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 9:16 am
Also published in Books, Infodesign & graphics, Movies & motion, Visual thinking, XPLANE news | comments (0)



Dave Gray » Projects

Dave is the founder and president of XPLANE:

I’m a project guy. As an artist, entrepreneur, educator and amateur philosopher, I always have a number of projects going, both personal and professional. Sometimes they go somewhere, sometimes I get bored and abandon them. One of the beauties of the internet is that even abandoned projects continue to exist and can be picked up or reenergized at any moment. Here’s the definitive list of projects that I am working on or have worked on in the past (A work in progress). The list is alphabetical because I don’t work on these projects in any kind of linear way. They are like a busy kitchen: there is always something simmering, something boiling, something set aside to cool for awhile, something in the deep freeze, and something being served. In fact I am still working on this list. If you see something with no explanation it’s because I haven’t finished writing the description yet :)

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Also published in Art & architecture, Books, Communications, Creativity, Infodesign & graphics, Learning, Photography, Random, Visual thinking, Weblogs, XPLANE news | Comments Off



18 Lessons Learned in 2008

“It’s time for our 2nd annual Year-End Lessons Learned post. 2008 was a great year for Common Craft. While we published a number of videos that we’re very proud of, 2008 was all about building a foundation for the future of our business. Going into 2009, we’re feeling confident that we have a solid foundation in place – and now is our time to put more videos into the world.

Here are a few things we learned…”

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Comments Off



Kronos video

Sample visual
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.

Azure poster

Sample visual
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.

Tweets & Flickrs