Corona, Calif. | July 31, 2017 – PlainJoe, a Multi-Disciplinary Design company, has welcomed heavy-hitting industry experts to its team over the past year.
Disney Alumni Mel McGowan and his brother, Peter, founded PlainJoe in 2001 with the vision of bringing Disney’s innovative approaches to creativity and design to everyday leaders.
“We took a decade of Disney Imagineering experience and created a special ops spinoff,” said Mel McGowan, AICP, LEED AP, co-founder and Chief Creative Principal at PlainJoe.
Since 2016, PlainJoe’s “special ops” team has welcomed Principal Architect Matt Molsberry, NCARB, AIA, an architect licensed in over 40 states; Architectural Development Manager Tim Cruz, who brings over 20 years of diverse architectural and planning experience in design, production, project management, and business development; and Architectural Manager Shanaz Ansari, who brings over 4 decades of experience in architectural management.
“It has been an honor to creatively lead this motley crew of artists and architects, men and women who are passionate about the art and craft of telling stories in 3 dimensions,” McGowan said. “We’ve taken the lessons learned from a decade of Disney, as well as a decade of leading a national design build organization, and applied that to a great collection of companies and causes that are really leading some pretty significant transformation in communities and cities around the world.”
The PlainJoe team takes on projects of all sizes and scopes, from startups and church plants to major international corporations.
“One of the unique things we’re doing is harnessing Walt Disney’s Blue Sky process to tap into client stories,” McGowan said.
The PlainJoe team facilitates a multi-day, interactive workshop with each new client where they distill the client’s story, according to McGowan. He said the character, setting, and plot of each client are pinpointed and crafted into a big idea that informs thousands of design decisions going forward.
McGowan said that the leaders who generally gravitate toward PlainJoe are leaders who “understand the power of story.” For these leaders, McGowan said, “the light bulb has been the power to go beyond just branding, websites, and advertising mediums to include Spatial Storytelling℠.”
The three-dimensional approach that PlainJoe considers to be its hallmark allows customers, guests, and visitors to use all five senses to understand a company, organization, or church’s story through experience.
“You can create an office space that envelops people into that culture without spending extra,” McGowan said. “We’re making it available to leaders of transformational companies and causes.”
When it comes to Spatial Storytelling, McGowan said that PlainJoe is “able to do what Disney does for a fraction of the cost per square foot, but still have that same impact.”
