Archives:
Visual thinking

Kind of a catch-all category for visual thinking and communication.

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 So many of them are outdated and linkrotted.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




Visual Thinking School: Do-overs

Back in June the federal government unveiled a newly designed visual to replace the Food Pyramid many of us are familiar with. Rather than simply showing us what each food group is, the new graphic also is meant to give us an idea of proper portion control of each food group. Shaped like a plate (and cup for the milk) the graphic is very simple, especially when held in contrast with the food pyramid.

This change prompted us at XPLANE | Dachis Group to take a look at a few other long-standing charts, graphics and diagrams and ask whether they could use a bit of sprucing up.

Read more »

Posted by Drew Crowley on Thursday, October 6th, 2011 at 9:07 am
Also published in Communications, Data visualization, Food & drink, Graphic design, Infodesign & graphics, Visual Thinking School | comments (0)



Bring history to life with visual thinking

This is a guest post by Jeff Manuel, Assistant Professor of History at SIUE.

As a history professor, I work with words. Pages and pages of them, in fact. Words to write, words to read, words to speak. I use pictures and images too, but they usually play second fiddle to the words. So it was challenging and humbling to visit XPLANE | Dachis Group for a recent Visual Thinking School (VTS) because it forced me to think deeply about using visual thinking to communicate history. It was also enlightening, as I came away convinced that history instructors should incorporate more visual thinking tools into our classrooms.


We started by creating empathy maps for students and teachers to help us get into their heads regarding what they’re seeing, hearing, thinking and doing while in class.

Read more »

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Thursday, August 4th, 2011 at 11:33 am
Also published in History, Learning, Presentations, Sketching & illustration, Visual Thinking School, XPLANE news | comments (2)



Old cartoonist, new tricks

For those of us who have enjoyed Lloyd Dangle’s disaffected “Troubletown” strip over the years, the next step in his career is rather interesting — and reflective of the growing popularity of visual recording.

Oops, looks like I gave away the ending… also, some slightly NSFW alt-weeklyish writing appears at the beginning of this Pacific Northwest Inlander article.

Posted by Matt Morasky on Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Also published in Comics | comments (0)



A visual thinking showdown: Top Jeff 2011

I should probably begin by explaining why we call it “Top Jeff” in the first place. Myself, fellow St. Louis designer Susanne and XPLANE Project Manager Lisa were discussing the strange phenomenon of Jeffs that orbit the XPLANE | Dachis Group world (we counted around eight or nine). It was determined a reality show should be created that would collect all of these Jeffs together and pit them against one another to find out who would be Top Jeff!

Cut to Spirit Week at XPLANE, a week where we do fun, silly things to raise money for local charities. We needed a name for our Top Chef-style quickfire competition and Top Jeff felt right. Instead of Jeff vs. Jeff it became XPLANEr vs. XPLANEr. Events were devised which tested an XPLANE employee’s most basic skills: Scheduling, live sketching, rendering and more! The St. Louis staff was split into two teams and we gathered in our main conference room. What followed was an hour of teeth-clenching trepidation and gut-wrenching tension! The defeated were downtrodden. The victors, proud. Here follows an account of the events that took place that fateful April day in St. Louis…

Read more »

Posted by Drew Crowley on Friday, May 20th, 2011 at 9:19 am
Also published in Creativity, Sketching & illustration, XPLANE news | comments (1)



Draw that tune!


VTS (aka Visual Thinking School) at XPLANE’s St. Louis office.

At XPLANE’s public Visual Thinking School on March 3, we were looking for a new “live sketching” challenge. In the past, we’ve had people describe children’s book scenes, or tell personal stories while others would stand by dry erase boards taking visual notes. It’s always interesting to see just how unique each drawing turns out.

Anyway, having just caught El Monstero’s Led Zeppelin tribute at the Pageant in St Louis, I thought it would be fun to do some live sketching of “Stairway to Heaven.” The lyrics are so rich with imagery it seemed a natural. So we played the song, pausing every few lines to allow people time for interpretation. We learned that it’s one thing to listen to the song but it’s another to see it in sketch form!

Read more »

Posted by W. Scott Matthews on Friday, March 25th, 2011 at 10:02 am
Also published in Music & sound, Sketching & illustration, Visual Thinking School | comments (0)



The role of visual thinking and communication in change management

Because we get a kick out of seeing our beloved founder Dave Gray wearing a tie, here’s a great interview he did with Dr. Martin Eppler of the University of St. Gallen. It’s about visual thinking, effective communication and change. It’s about 15 minutes long and was recorded during Dave’s stay at the =mcminstitute in Switzerland.

Read more »

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Friday, February 4th, 2011 at 11:41 am
Also published in Business issues, Communications, Leadership | comments (1)



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 »




The problem with chunks

We’re all familiar with the problem of the rising tide of information.

But how do you wrestle with that wave? The growing magnitude and complexity of information is not going away, and yet by most accounts the bandwidth we possess to process that information is going to remain fairly constant (barring any long-overdue cybernetic enhancements.) How do you parse that wave into a channel fit for human consumption?

There are plenty of ways, but I’m only going to focus on one theory here. I’m also going to have some problems with it.
Read more »

Posted by James Macanufo on Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Also published in Communications, Infodesign & graphics, Learning | comments (0)



What’s in your worry closet?

Whenever we start a new client engagement, we begin by working to understand our target audience. Who are they? And what is it that they are looking for?

Another way to frame that question is to ask, “What keeps them up at night?.” If you can figure that out, then you can begin to understand how to best address their needs. If you’re striving for solutions, it’s best to begin with the end in mind and work backward from there. So what keeps you up at night? How about a little Visual Meditation doodle therapy to clear your head?

Okay pencil and paper ready?

Sketch it, scan it and upload it to our xBlog activities Group on Flickr.

  • Exercise: Draw a big head and fill it with the things you worry about
  • Optional: Add a speech bubble
  • Flickr tag: xworries
Posted by W. Scott Matthews on Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 9:57 am
Also published in Life, Sketching & illustration, Visual meditations | comments (0)



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