Creative Director

NASHVILLE - 

I have a monkey mind. It swings from the rafters.

Fortunately, it takes this primate interesting places. I was born in Kenya, grew up in Tennessee; educated in St. Louis; lived and studied abroad in Paris and Poland; came of age in Chicago; developed a family and career in Pittsburgh; and now live and work in Nashville.

Most of my journeys take me on the road of creativity, collaboration, innovation, visual learning and “strategery”.

Along with my wife, Diane, I co-founded Alphachimp Studio Inc., an information graphics and facilitation firm, in 1998 in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood.

Driven by fear and housing lust, we moved to Pittsburgh after 9/11 for five great years living in the Mexican War Streets. Today live on the front porch of a house in Nashville’s West End.

I always imaged Diane and I would be like Ray and Charles Eames. But we are more like Barney and Betty Rubble. My wife is busy with two little girls, and I am just the ghost in the machine: the company is really run by out fantastic virtual assistants, Launa and Becky.

The real talent lies with the other graphic recorders and facilitators who serve our clients around North America, Europe and Asia.

Blogging is thinking to me, so I post early and often, bookmark obsessively using del.icio.us, and have started a bad Twitter habit. Most thoughts find themselves here:

Alphachimp Studio WeBlog- an eclectic thread of design-oriented posts with sustainability and visual eye-candy sprinkled in.

The Center for Graphic Facilitation - this tracks the space between information graphics and graphic facilitation. The site includes an interactive map of the world where practitioners can hang there shingle as professional graphic recorders and facilitators.

Durand Gallery - my artwork (mostly paintings), as well as a portal to some of the other talented people in my family.

http://linkedin.com/in/peterdurand
 http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alphachimpstudio/
http://twitter.com/peterdurand