Maya Design on the South Side spends a lot of time outside the box. The result is the occasional spinout, as in the case of LUMA Institute and Interstack Initiative.
Chris Pacione is heading LUMA Institute as director and CEO, a company that sprang from requests from clients who wanted to develop their own intelligent design capacities. Pacione, formerly the co-founder of health product company Body Media, describes LUMA as more of a discipline than a process taught through a series of workshops and coaching opportunities.
“It’s not a marketing gig,” he explains. “(LUMA) is a transfer of learning to develop creative capacity and skills so companies can do this stuff on their own. How do you bring something new into the world and stay aware of the process? It’s a series of tools and methods that, once mastered, can be applied to any number of design situations.
“It’s like karate,” he adds. “Once you’ve mastered the moves, the expert comes in and begins composing them in the right kind of way.” The company will share space with Maya, draw on the Maya designers but employ three full-timers and a growing supply of teachers.
While not officially spun out yet, Interstacks will be led by Gary Kiliany, previously of iKnowthat.com and co-founder of Dynavox, a local company that helps the severely disabled to communicate through software. Interstacks technology was created to interconnect and control the increasing number of common products, services and environments that contain microprocessors.
Maya Design has spun off three other companies since its founding in 1989: Maya VIZ, now part of Generation Dynamics, Rhiza Labs and The MAYA Group.
Writer: Deb Smit
Source: Chris Pacione, LUMA Institute
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