About
James Buckhouse believes story, art, and design can bend the arc of humanity’s progress, if you do it right, and brings that idea into everything he does: from movies to startups to paintings to books and to ballets.
As Design Partner at Sequoia, James Buckhouse works with founders from idea to IPO and beyond to help them design their companies, products, cultures, and businesses. Buckhouse got his start in film, lensing shots, crafting character arcs, and punching up story for some of the biggest film franchises, including the Shrek, Madagascar, and Matrix series. Today he is a sought-after writer and collaborator for some of Hollywood’s most creative producers and directors.
As an artist, he has exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, the Solomon R. Guggenheim’s Works & Process Series, The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, The Berkeley Art Museum, and the Dia Center. He has collaborated with leading choreographers at the New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, LA Dance Project, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and Pennsylvania Ballet.
Buckhouse regularly guest lectures at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Yale School of Architecture, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and Stanford’s d.school. Prior to joining Sequoia in 2014, he was the Senior Experience Architect at Twitter, with patents for single-tap emoji replies, opinion polls on social, and more once-novel interactions that are now commonplace. He has a B.A. in Visual Art from Brown University.
Awards
Method and apparatus for capturing and broadcasting media
Interactive content in a messaging platform
Co-invented with James L. Skinner
Interactive content in a messaging platform
Co-invented with James L. Skinner
Interactive content in a messaging platform
Co-invented with James L. Skinner
Interactive content in a messaging platform
Co-invented with James L. Skinner
Work Experience
Education
Projects
Sony Pictures Classics (currently in production)
DreamWorks
DreamWorks
DreamWorks
DreamWorks
DreamWorks
Dreamworks
Tippet
DreamWorks
DreamWorks
PDI
Writing
A glimpse into the Company Design Program at Sequoia
Every endeavor starts with story.
What will it mean to live in an AR world?
Design your content like you design your products; transform the mysterious art of content into a repeatable and measurable process.
...You cannot overstate the joy of opening a 500-year-old book and flipping through pages that feel as fresh as a Tame Impala poster pulled from a Brooklyn letterpress.
Don’t do the assignment: instead, solve the problem.
It wasn’t enough to have a pond that reflected the rising sun in 1671, the grounds of Versailles also had to have an enormous bronze fountain that depicted Apollo dragging the sun across the horizon...
Map the foundational elements of your strategy to specific colors.
Rise from pixel-pusher to a product visionary with a new type of design document called a “story map.”
Halfway between a storyboard and a treasure map, a story map bundles the value and functional flow of your product with the delight people might feel at each step in your product.
Tell the story of your product as if it were a movie.
Exhibitions
Once a year, we transformed the SF Ballet into a night of total art and design—with video installation, dance, contemporary music, and fashion collaborations.
Contemporary ballet with Benjamin Millepied and Bryce Dessner
Contemporary ballet with Benjamin Millepied and Bryce Dessner
Video installation and performance with Christopher Wheeldon and dancers from NYCB and SFB
Tap is a virtual dance school for animated characters that exist on the Internet and can be downloaded to individual users’ Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and desktops. Beaming stations placed around Manhattan send the dancers to people's Palm Pilots as they walked by.
Tap is a virtual dance school for animated characters that exist on the Internet and can be downloaded to individual users’ Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and desktops. Beaming stations placed around Manhattan send the dancers to people's Palm Pilots as they walked by.
Speaking
Contact
Teams
