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Infodesign & graphics

Information design is the skill and practice of preparing information so people can use it with efficiency and effectiveness. —Wikipedia

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 So many of them are outdated and linkrotted.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




XPLANE is now fully integrating into Dachis Group

Hello,

I’got some exciting news to share. I’m pleased to announce that XPLANE is now fully integrating into Dachis Group.

As you know, Dachis Group acquired XPLANE in April of 2010 as part of the company’s vision of building the world’s best social business design consultancy.

Over the past 18 months we’ve worked to integrate the value and heritage of the XPLANE services into the broader offerings of the Dachis Group as well as offer the Dachis Group value and services to XPLANE’s clients with the overall goal of delivering a unified approach and experience to all of our clients.

Read more »

Posted by Parker Lee on Friday, October 14th, 2011 at 10:05 am
Also published in Social business, XPLANE news | comments (1)



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, Visual thinking, Visual Thinking School | comments (0)



Behind the scenes: The 2.0 Adoption Council salary survey graphic

We take a lot of complicated issues, ideas, initiatives, products, plans and processes and visualize them so that people can better understand their world.

When we started back in the 1990s, we designed a lot of charts. Now we help businesses redesign — and communicate those changes to all involved. We’ve been pretty busy because business is changing pretty quickly. And in big ways. As we say at Dachis Group

Technology, society, and work are all changing at breakneck speeds, but businesses are not keeping pace. When these emerging trends work together, they call for a new kind of business — one that is distributed, collaborative, agile and better positioned to succeed.

The 2.0 Adoption Council (also part of Dachis Group) recently completed a survey of its members and we worked with them to represent the results in a meaningful and interesting way. The survey was purposefully simple, but highlights some key changes happening in social business. It was just two questions: What department do you work in and what’s your salary? Here’s what was learned… Read more »

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Thursday, May 12th, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Also published in Business issues, Social business, XPLANE news | comments (0)



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 Business of design, Communications, Creativity, Graphic design, 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 Business of design, Communications, Graphic design, XPLANE | comments (2)



Happy holidays from XPLANE!

What a year!

We worked hard, traveled the world, learned a lot, met a bunch of wonderful people, had some fun and expanded our family — in April we joined the Dachis Group and now count the folks from Dachis, Headshift, Stuzo and Archrival as colleagues (Update: And as of yesterday, the folks at Powered!).

So to celebrate, we asked our new friends from around the world to send us their favorite local holiday recipes: Amsterdam, Austin, Lincoln, London, Madrid, Philadelphia, Portland, St. Louis and Sydney. And as an added bonus, we’ve thrown in some silly charts about the chow along with some serious information about infodesign.

The recipes include Marionberry cobbler, Cocido madrileño, Grilled tri-tip, Texas pecan cake, Boerenkool Met Worst, Pavlova, Philly cheesesteaks, Mince pie and Gooey butter cake.

We hope you enjoy these dishes as much as we do — and here’s to an amazing 2011 and beyond.

Happy holidays from your friends at XPLANE!

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010 at 10:40 am
Also published in Food & drink, XPLANE news | comments (1)



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, Learning, Visual thinking | comments (0)



“Visual Language for Designers”

Visual complexity is a paradox. On the one hand, complexity is a compelling feature known to capture a viewer’s attention and stimulate interest… On the other hand, complexity only arouses curiosity up to a point. When a visual is extremely complex, viewers may tend to avoid it altogether.

There are a lot of reasons why I really like Connie Malamed’s 2009 book, “Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand.” Here are three:

1. Balance | The book balances examples of great design, explanations of core visual principles and informative bits on cognitive research about how the brain processes graphics. Some pieces you might be familiar with: Nicholas Felton‘s Annual Reports, the HistoryShots series, and Nigel Holmes‘ and Alberto Cairo‘s work all appear here. But a great strength of the book is in the mix of graphics projects you’ve almost certainly not seen before.

2. Context | But it’s not just about infographics. It’s not just about charts. It’s not just about data visualization. It’s not just about posters or maps or illustrations. The book clearly places each of those outputs into context by using specific projects as examples of a key design principle rather than sorting them by deliverable, or style, or date, or provenance or designer. Seeing each piece according to its best qualities is almost better than having an overall project case study. It helps make successes clear and repeatable.
Read more »

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Also published in Books, Data visualization, Graphic design, Language, Mapping, Product design, Visual thinking | comments (2)



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.

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 10:08 am
Also published in Business issues, Communications, Social business, Visual thinking, XPLANE news | 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