Cartafina charts are like a map on an artists journey to a creative solution. They wants to take some of the planning difficulty out of people's creative projects so that people can focus more on the creation and less on the organisation of information. It’s simply about creating better and faster.

about the charts

It is said that the Challenger Space Shuttle catastrophe in 1986 was a chart design accident. The faulty O-Ring that caused the Challenger to explode could have been spotted on a chart drawn by one of the technicians before the flight. But because of the faulty communicative qualities of of the chart, the mistake was overlooked. While cartafina charts don’t necessarily save lives, they do help to launch creative ideas faster and more efficiently by saving tedious hours of organisational work hidden in every creative project. Cartafina charts take the organisational effort out of the project, so people can spend more time on creating.

about cartafina

Cartafina means "good map" in Italian. Italy is the birthplace of culture and the starting point of literary and artistic traditions, methods and ideas of which some are still in use today. So an Italian name for a place that helps creators create great art better and faster felt like the right choice. And the word "map" reveals that cartafina charts are not replacing the creator or dictating what is being created. They only make the journey easier by supporting the creator with information about the logistical and organizational aspects of the creation process.

about cartafina

In the summer of 2008  Petra, information architect and interaction designer, started to write a novel and realized that it was easy to get lost in the writing and end up with a labour-intensive work that could have better structure, better characters, more thrilling conflicts and more satisfying resolutions. Not happy with either the process or the end result she started to distill all the major writing schools into easy-to-understand charts that can be printed out or used as digital whiteboards during writing. This would have been the end of the story, was it not that the charts had taken so long and were so complex, that it made sense to offer them to other writers experiencing the same difficulties. And so cartafina was born. For now, there are mainly writing charts in the cartafina store, which are constantly updated and refined as Petra uses them for her own daily writing of scripts, novels and articles. But expect to find charts of other creative disciplines here in the near future. An excursion into the art of cooking happened with the cinnamon rolls visual recipe. And in the coming year, Petra would like to take on herb growing. And so the story continues.

about Petra

cartafina is created by Petra Quilitz.Petra is an award winning Information Architect and Interaction Designer who helps international brands and companies create valuable customer experiences on the web. Petra spent more than a decade creating concept, information architecture and interaction designs for high-traffic eCommerce portals, high-impact brand sites and high-volume database intranets, bringing value to clients such as Audi, BMW, Toshiba, Ferrero, Tommy Hilfiger, and many others. Currently Petra is an independent consultant, senior concepter and interaction designer. She is passionate about finding and telling the story around a product or service and offering simple solutions to complex navigational problems.

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cinnamon rolls

storymeter

archetyper

timeliner mini

timeliner maxi

artboarder mini

novelmeter

moviemeter

Questions? Comments? Get in touch at

hello@cartafina.com. Let cartafina know what you think about the charts or where they can be made better. Please give feedback on how a cartafina chart has helped you in your project.

Where and how you can use
cartafina products

You can use cartafina charts as a reference in any of your creative projects. Print them, frame them, blog them. As often as you want, anywhere you want. For commercial use in courses or learning materials, please contact cartafina. Read the disclaimer for more information.

Who's behind cartafina?
Who creates all these charts?

Cartafina is Petra's Information Architecture Store. Petra is an Information Architect and Interaction Designer who helps large companies create valuable customer experiences on the web. Petra is passionate about finding and telling the magical story around a product or service and offering simple solutions to complex navigational problems. Contact herfor employment or project inquiries.

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