Business | Maga Design Group

“Successful solutions are based on the powerful principle that resolution occurs by fostering the positive, not by attacking the negative… One basic principle has the power to resolve problems: Support the solution instead of attacking the suppose causes…. The way to finesse a high-energy solution is to seek the answer that will make all sides happy and still be practical. Such solutions involve utilization of both the tolerant right brain as well as the judgmental left brain.”

- David Hawkins, from his amazing book "Power Vs. Force"

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Visualizing our tax dollars at work

Visualization can make even the most boring, painful, lackluster information look interesting. Jess Bachman has created a fact-based representation of the federal budget for 2011, focusing on the programs that receive 200M+ and the discretionary budget (essentially dollars spent with contractors as opposed to those that go toward government employee salaries and things like medicare). Continue Reading →

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Are you going Google?

Apple’s recent iCloud announcement is yet another sign of the movement towards cloud computing and a mobile workforce. Google is obviously the biggest player in this realm, and its new tool can show you what your company could be saving and accomplishing it if had “Gone Google” instead of using the more traditional Microsoft platform. Continue Reading →

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NYTimes InfoDesign Shout-out

“Statistics is now the sexiest subject around,” said Dr. Hans Rosling, a professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. We wholeheartedly agree! Continue Reading →

The ABCs of Maga: A is for “All-Nighter”

If we have done anything in the past (almost) 5 years at Maga, it has been to establish a unique kind of personality and culture. Founded in the Affinity Lab space in Adams Morgan, Maga’s culture is based on the notion that a creative firm in DC must operate in all kinds of environments (many not that creative), partnerships, customers etc. We worked hard at the lab, and then later in our own space, to build a company that is dedicated, team-oriented, fun loving…an alternative to the larger, more corporate environments that are strewn across the beltway in the Metro DC region. We wanted to cultivate a local, walk-to-work mentality, where people would have a bit of the ‘third place’ to find their passion. Continue Reading →

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Map O’ The Day #217 – What Are People Really Buying Online?

Today’s MOTD was spotted on a colleague, Christian Gammill’s twitter feed. Created by the retail analytics company Permuto, this graphic uses their collected data and data from the US census bureau to paint a picture of what people buy online as opposed to in stores.

Some of the categories that caught me by surprise were clothing, furniture and food and wine. I would like to see the return percentage of clothes bought in store and clothes bought online, i would assume it is a much higher rate for online purchases which would really even out the numbers.

Map O’ The Day #212 – Google’s Acquisition Appetite

Today’s MOTD brought to us by www.scores.org and www.byjess.net is a great infographic that shows the acquisitions that Google has made from February 2001 to August 2010. I really like the way the author uses the circles with different colors to represent the different markts and the outer ring to show size and then the breakdown of what the motivation for the aquisiton was in the three colums.