Information Design

When designing a piece of information you must keep it clear and simple to read, by only having the most important information which you want to communicate to the viewer. Due to the fact that our pace of life has become increasingly fast, this means we do not have enough time to stop and read a long piece of text and therefore information needs to be straight to the point to create an instant message.

 Information design comes in a variety of different forms, for example, packaging, recipes, road signs and bills. It has a clear purpose to inform the viewer by communicating a message in simple means which can be easily understood. For example a recipe is normally laid out with the ingredients listed in the order in which you will need them, followed by the process which is clearly broken down into bullet points.

 Otto Neurath developed the ‘Isotype system’ which is a method of showing connections of information in a pictorial form, for example displaying the information in chart or graph. This therefore allowed complex information to be not only easier to understand but also quicker to read.

 Erik Spiekerman typographer and font designer, “...in order to design for understanding, we need to understand design...” If you are designing a piece of information without any knowledge of the basic design rules, it is very likely that what you are trying to communicate with be confused and disjointed. There are key principals in which you should understand before designing a piece of text. Firstly grouping information; i.e. lines, space, headings, and sub-headings. Secondly consistency with the appropriate language, layout and a constant clear grid structure should be applied. The typography must also be legible and appropriate for the target audience to understand with consistent spacing and the use of white space and alignment also helps to balance the text to make it more inviting to read. Another principal to consider are graphic elements to aid the clarity of the text such as bullet points, line length and icons and finally the visual hierarchy; i.e. the type size/weight, colour, value, placement and spacing.

 A recent example where I have needed to use these rules of information design were for a product research questionnaire in which all of the principals played a significant part in the design element to make sure it was clear, simple to follow and quick/easy to complete.  Otherwise if I had ignored the basic rules the questions could have become misinterpreted and then my results would have been invalid.