XPLANE (company)
Encyclopedia
XPLANE is a design company that creates illustrations for corporate clients. The company aims to distill complex processes into easy-to-grasp illustrations, using visualization techniques which it calls Pictonics. XPLANE was founded in 1993 in St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

 by David Gray as a visual arts company creating graphics for magazines such as Business 2.0
Business 2.0
Business 2.0 was a monthly magazine publication founded by magazine entrepreneur Chris Anderson, Mark Gross, and journalist James Daly in order to chronicle the rise of the "New Economy"...

 (in particular that magazine's "XPLANATiONS"). It soon expanded into illustrating corporate presentations, business plans, and whitepapers; training; and interactive design.

In 2000, the company was awarded the St. Louis Business Journal Best Places To Work award for People Development. At the time of the award, the company had a policy of flexible working hours and of allowing employees two weeks at full pay every year for workshops, seminars, and training. Other employee perquisites included discussion groups during the day, night classes taught by employees to other and to prospective employees, a weekly party on the company building's roof every Friday after hours, and a massage once per month. The company's headquarters are now located in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

.

On its website, the company hosts two web logs, the xBlog (information on design topics) and the bBlog (business applications of graphic design), and case studies that include graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

s, statistical maps, and discussions of Internet protocols and brand strategy. The weblogs are run by Knowledge Manager Bill Keaggy, a digital designer who spends between 10 minutes and 2 hours per day on them.

Further reading

— a discussion of Business 2.0s brand, illustrating some of the "little ant people" (as they were termed by the magazine's art director, Laura Morris), that characterized XPLANE's "XPLANATiONS", that came to be an integral part of that brand — a report of XPLANE's "xblog" electronic mail marketing campaign run by Bill Keaggy — a report of XPLANE that includes several example XPLANATiONS — Sikes interviews David Gray.
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