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.
“Different” by Youngme Moon
Also published in Books, Business of design, Infodesign & graphics, Movies & motion, Visual thinking, XPLANE news comments (0)
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!
Also published in Communications, Infodesign & graphics, Language, Visual thinking, XPLANE news comments (0)
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.
Also published in Graphic design, Infodesign & graphics, Journalism, Movies & motion, Politics, Visual thinking, XPLANE news comments (1)
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.
Did You Know? 4.0
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.
For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit The Economist’s Media Convergence conference site at mediaconvergence.economist.com, or stop by shifthappens.wikispaces.com for all things Did You Know.
Also published in Communications, Graphic design, History, Infodesign & graphics, Internet, Journalism, Marketing & branding, Mobile, Old media, Politics, Privacy & security, Social business, Software & technology, Visual thinking, XPLANE news comments (4)
20 Fascinating Ancient Maps
Nice rundown of interesting historical maps on a site that seems to have popped up out of nowhere then been abandoned.
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.
“GOOD” Design
Behind the scenes of GOOD Magazine’s infographics.
We always found that there’s info lurking behind everything in the world,” says Morgan Clendaniel, deputy editor at GOOD Magazine. “You’ll read an article, but you won’t see the data behind it — nor would you want to. Nobody wants to read an Excel file.”
Clendaniel and I are discussing GOOD’s Transparency section — a regular print and online feature of standalone infographics. The general interest magazine best known for its social consciousness has published infographics on a number of topics, some serious (fuel efficiency between modes of transportation, a map of international legislation on death penalty), others more playful (relative trophy sizes, museum ticket prices).
“The goal is to illustrate these issues in a way that is entertaining, accessible, but also informative,” Clendaniel says.
(Thanks @swissmiss!)
The Golden Hour Calculator | Sunrise and Sunset information for photographers
This is nice!
Discover when the Golden Hour is at your current location, explore visually how the golden hour changes with the seasons and where you are in the world…
The Golden Hour (sometimes referred to as the Magic Hour) is often defined as the first and last hour of sunlight in the day when the special quality of light yields particularly beautiful photographs.
For this Golden Hour calculator website, I have used a more precise definition of the Golden Hour. I have chosen to define the Golden Hour as that period when the sun lies between 6 degrees below the horizon and 6 degrees above. This definition of the Golden Hour more accurately accounts for the speed of the transition from day to night around the world at different times of year.
Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.
I fully support this:
Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen. Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.
