Information design

“Information design has been defined as the art and science of preparing information so that it can be used by human beings with efficiency and effectiveness.” (Wikipedia)

Information design is one of those work-related things that gets me very excited. I can talk about it for hours, even at home. (Luckily my other half, Tiff, is also in to this subject.)

With good information design you can:

• Make complex information easy to understand
• Visualize data patterns that could otherwise not be found
• Show context
• Save screen or page real estate
• Entertain your audience

An often used example to illustrate information design is Charles Minard’s 1869 masterpiece. It shows, and I quote Wikipedia, “…the losses in men, their movements, and the temperature of Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign“.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to incorporate information design in to my work as much as I would like. This is changing, much thanks to Edward Tufte. Anyone with an interest in visual communication cannot help but to be inspired by his passion about the subject. It is Tufte’s ability to make information design relevant to a broad spectrum of people that has raised its profile, and put it on the proverbial map of clients everywhere.

From Tufte’s ‘The Visual Display of Quantitative Information’.

How good is Tufte? I rate his 2007 Washington DC seminar as one of the most inspiring experiences in my professional life (another one was discovering the joys of HTML in the early 1990’s…). The man is a genius. If you can attend a Tufte course, do so. It is money well spent and you will come away with a new way of looking at information and an increased love of communication.

If you can’t get to a Tufte class (they are mostly held here in the US) I recommend buying his books. They are only $160 USD for all four. Or at the very least grab the latest issue of IdN. It has a large feature on infographics, a field closely tied to information design.