We are constantly being hit by information begging for our attention. While we can live without some of it, there is still plenty we need to read, listen to, interact with, and respond to.
In order to react to the messages we do need, there needs to be enough of an understanding of it to make a decision. What helps us understand complex information? Information designers provide the answer to this question.
According to the International Institute for Information Design, information design is “the defining, planning, and shaping of the contents of a message and the environments in which it is presented, with the intention to satisfy the information needs of the intended recipients.”
The most common applications of information design include news info-graphics (maps, charts, and diagrams), annual reports, and data visualizations, says William Bardel, principal of Luminant Design in New York.
“Information designers also are involved in wayfinding design – the design of complex navigational signage systems for spaces such as buildings, highways, cities and airports,” adds Bardel, who has 14 years of experience working at design, architecture, engineering, and software firms.
For the past 40 years, information design has been pulling away from graphic design and becoming its own discipline. In the past decade particularly, data has become more complex and pushed information design further into a field of its own.
“The good news is the world is full of confusing, badly designed information, so there is plenty of work for information designers,” Bardel says. “The bad news is that information seems to increase in complexity every day, while the average attention span continues to shrink. The Web is a direct, primary cause of this situation.”
Graphic designer and theorist Nigel Holmes and info-graphics guru Edward Tufte have also brought more attention to the practice of information design. Holmes has written several books on aspects of information design. Tufte, meanwhile, made headlines earlier this year when he was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s Recovery Independent Advisory Panel to help provide greater transparency on the use of recovery-related funds.
Bardel says the nature of the practice of information design has also changed.
“Thanks to recent human factors, research into cognition and psychology by scientists, there is more understanding of how people see and process visual stimuli,” he explains.
Mark Harris, academic director for Graphic Design and Web Design & Interactive Media at The Art Institute of Ohio – Cincinnati, says information design today calls for an interdisciplinary approach that combines skills in graphic design, interactive media, information theory, and the sciences.
“The traditional graphic designer who does not have interactive skills does not exist anymore,” he states. “What a graphic designer has to do is take a tremendous amount of data and make it understandable to a decision-maker.”
Not understanding some information can cost money, time, and resources. Harris uses a subway schedule as an example.
“A subway schedule must tell you a lot of information clearly and quickly so you can act on it,” he explains. “If it doesn’t make sense, you are going to give up and seek another form of transportation.
“Say you choose to take a cab,” Harris continues. “You end up spending more of your money to take transportation that, by the way, is also emitting greenhouse gases that hurt the environment."
Designers may not need to know everything about the products and services they organize information for, but they do have to become temporary experts of everything they touch and also understand the goals of the end user.
While the barrage of information the average person encounters can cause overload, designers are faced with the challenge of pulling all the pieces together to create a structured visual representation.
“For an information designer, it is not enough to just stylize what is handed to you,” Bardel says. "In order to produce something you know people will be able to read and understand, you have to truly grasp not only the information involved, but everything relative to it, including the audience and their physical and cognitive abilities/limitations, the client’s objectives and strategy, how the delivery will affect access, etc. Sometimes this isn’t easy, depending on your client, audience, content, and means for delivery."
Bardel says information design is a good field for those with patience and an appetite for problem solving and complex puzzles. He maintains that building a foundation in graphic design is just the beginning.
Harris agrees. “It goes back to foundation classes and design fundamentals that are the basis of information design,” he says. “You then delve into typographic issues, readability, hierarchy, and aesthetics. The next step is presenting information in a way that causes decision-makers to act.”