Is your culture healthy?

Xplane has a great product. It produces illustrated explanations for complicated things. I first encountered their work in the 90s in Business 2.0 magazine. More recently I worked with a client whose business process was brilliant, but took two three hour sessions to explain. They had a chart cobbled together in PowerPoint (including those horrible little Microsoft clip art stick figures) which was unfathomable. I wanted Xplane to translate. Client wasn't sold - in part because a certain amount of obscuring suited them - their process was patented. The process of dealing with Xplane was one of the nicest, most professional contacts I have had in business - even though we did not proceed they were genuinely interested in helping the client and superb in their communication and follow up. Will I recommend them again? - in a flash.

Dave Gray, the founder of the company maintains an excellent blog. This diagram features. If you visit his flickr page it contains more explanation and information when you roll over the image.

The diagram illustrates - literally - the dual powers of simplicity and visual over verbal.

Comments

Go figure

Took my daughter shopping tonight. We had dinner out. Got back home late. She laid her new clothes out in neat rows so she could choose what to wear for tomorrow. She's 5. I see her just every second weekend. How can such incredible errors of judgement (marrying my daughter's mother) result in such a wonderful little human being? Go figure

Mac Air Music

I love the idea of the Mac Air but, call me old fashioned, …no disk drive? How will I watch Ratatouille, Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Cars and A Bug's Life on DVD? The music on the MacAir launch commercial is terrific. I tracked the artiste Yael Naim's video for you. What is the name for this genre (Regina Spectre et al)? Apparently Steve Jobs chose the track personally for the TVC. Order from Amazon: Splash out:

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer...

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