INFORMATION DESIGN-pp 1-34
Introduction "Why Information Design Matters"
—All of us are both producers and consumers.
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Information design is the practice of applying "design" to information, both edification and commutativity
>Edification= to bring personal enlightenment
>Commutativity=process of mutual change
As designers we seek to edify more than to persuade. The meaning of interactiviy uses the interactive nature of communication.
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Information Design = Its purpose is the systematic arrangement and use of communication carriers, channels, and tokens to increase the understanding of those participating in a specific conversation of discourse. Works with fields of meaning
Charles and Ray Eames process of systematic design: decomposed myriad of components; analyzed and assembled; intuition of proportion and propriety
Used a timeline as a central organizing principle. Combined use of graphics, text, photography and film fulfilled the need to quickly and lucidly convey information.
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Enhances society's ability to collect, process, and disseminat information to produce understanding.
Theoretical Foundations of Information Design
We have to know where to look and what to look for. How design works and how we it can be made more effective.
>Power relationships as the source of information design=through different theories and methodologies and associations
>This book is a look at how this informs an assignment to inform, educate or persuade
Information Design: Emergence of a New Profession
Information Design = The art and science of preparing information so that it can be used by human beings with efficiency and effectiveness. Primary objectives are:
—To develop documents that are comprehansible, rapidly and accurately retrievable, and easy to translate into effective action.
—To design interactions with equipment that are easy, natural, and as pleasant as possible.
—To enable people to find their way in three-dimensional space with comfort and ease.
—Efficiancy and effectiveness!
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Need for Information Design=managing information in our complex modern society requires sophisticated computing and communication devices. We need the ability to present the right information to the right people at the right time.
>> Information Design is not an integrated profession
—Information Graphics, newspapers, editorial publications
—Presentation Graphics, business
—Scientific Visualization
—Inerface Design
—Data Management
—Signage and Wayfinding
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>> History of Information Design
–Inventors
William Playfair (graphs and charts), Florence Nightingale (statistical graphs used as information design), Michael George Muhall (pictorial statistics), Otto Neurath (Isotype), David Sibbet (graphically recording group dynamics), James Beniger and Dorothy Robyn (provide list of inventors of quantitative charts), HG Funkhourser (summarizes the early history of statistical graphs)
–Systematizers and Analysts
Persons that bring the pieces of the graphic language together to analyze them from particular points of view
Jacques Bertin (comprehensive semiotic analysis), Bui Bonsiepe (visual language of graphics has analouges to many traditional rhetorical devices, such as comics), Michael Twyman (how static information design direct eye movement)
–Universalists
Individuals hoped that purely visual communication,
without words, could become and international auxiliary language.
Margaret Mead, Tudolf Modley, EK Bliss, Otto Neurath (iconic language and symbols)
–Collectors
Persons with systematic points of view
Henry Dreyfus (specialize icons for various fields, ergonomics, industrial design, usability), Thompson and Davenport (visual dictionary)
–Writers of Instruction Manuals
Persons exclaiming "how-to" books on Information Design
Robert McKim (visual thinking tool for problem solving), Stephen Kosslyn (designing charts and graphs), Gene Zelazny (business charts), William Horton (icon design)
–Aestheticians
Persons interested in style and quality and its affect on usefulness, issues of precision and clarity
Edward Tufte (data-to-ink, chart junk)
–Popularizers
Leaders in the popularization of information design
Stephen Baker (book on Visual Persuasion), Nigel Holmes (educator and pioneer of explanation graphics, design attractiveness related to design effectiveness), David Macaulay (the way things work books), Richard Saul Wurman (raising public awareness of the importance of information design)
–Researchers
Those interested in researching information communication, such as The British Information Society.
–Foundational Research
Structured writing, information mapping, systematic ways of analysis. Looking at user-needs, set of techniques for analyzing, organizing, sequencing and displaying. A way to create information blocks. Research enables the designer to take advantage of the best aspects of words and images and integrate them into tightly conveyed meaning.
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>> Tension in Information Design
–Value differences, between designers (style and self-expression) and technical communication (must convey meanting through clarity, legibility, precision, comprehension and often simplicity) and researcher (try to avoid novelty, self expression priority is elevating clarity with extremely complex data)
–Democratization, automated computer tools (ie charts and graphs) amateurs knowledge of visual data display
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>> Information Design and Visual Language, professionalization of the emergence of a new language. Visual language is defined by the tight coupling of words, images, and shapes into a unified communication unit.
–Visual language is a language, because words cannot understand its "syntax, semantics, or pragmatics (semiotic theory) by using only the linguistic analysis.
—Shift in our culture from image-to-word ratio (example textbook with more illustrations)
—Information Design relies on the skillsets of creative design and rigorous research.