Table Of ContentInformation design
research and practice
Information design provides citizens, business, and government with a means of
presenting and interacting with complex information. It embraces applications
from wayfinding and map reading to forms design; from website and screen lay-
out to instruction. Done well it can communicate across languages and cultures,
convey complicated instructions, even change behaviours. This book offers an
authoritative guide to this important multidisciplinary subject.
Information design: research and practice weaves design theory and methods with
case studies of professional practice from leading information designers across
the world. The heavily illustrated text is rigorous yet readable, and offers a single,
must-have reference to anyone interested in information design or any of its
related disciplines such as interaction design, information graphics, document
design, universal design, service design, map-making, and wayfinding.
Alison Black is Professor of User-Centred Design and directs the Centre for
Information Design Research at the University of Reading. A psychologist by
training, she has always worked with designers, both in industry and academia.
Her research focuses on public communication in health settings and on the
presentation of weather and extreme events forecasting.
Paul Luna both researches and designs complex texts. He designed the last
two editions of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and has written on the
relationship between typography and lexicography, including a study of the
typography of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. Paul is an Emeritus Professor at
the University of Reading and co-editor of the Department of Typography &
Graphic Communication’s publication Typography Papers.
Ole Lund is Associate Professor in the Department of Design at the Norwegian
University of Science and Technology, and a former Programme Director for the
MA Information Design at the University of Reading. He has a special interest in
the history, theory, and practice of typography, i.e. design for reading.
Sue Walker is a Professor at the University of Reading with an interest in
typography and language, the design of learning materials for young children,
and information design in public services. She is a partner in the information
design consultancy, Text Matters, and was one of the principal researchers on the
AHRC-funded ‘Isotype revisited’ project.
Information
design
research and practice
edited by
Alison Black, Paul Luna, Ole Lund, and Sue Walker
Centre for Information Design Research, University of Reading
foreword by
Erik Spiekermann
iii
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Alison Black, Paul Luna, Ole Lund, and Sue Walker;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Alison Black, Paul Luna, Ole Lund, and Sue Walker to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade-
marks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
CIP data has been applied for
ISBN: 978-0-415-78632-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-58568-0 (ebk)
Publisher’s Note
This book has been prepared from camera-ready copy provided by the editors.
Typeset in Adobe Text, Monotype Classic Grotesque, and TypeTogether Abril families
by luna.design
Links to third-party websites are provided in good faith and for information
only. The publisher disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in
any third-party website referenced in this work.
Contents
Foreword by Erik Spiekermann ix
Introduction xi
Contributors xiv
Part 1 Historical perspectives
1 Early visualizations of historical time 3
Stephen Boyd Davis
2 Images of time 23
Christian Tominski et al. , Wolfgang Aigner, Silvia Miksch, and
Heidrun Schumann
3 William Playfair and the invention of statistical graphs 43
Ian Spence and Howard Wainer
4 Ship navigation 61
Thomas Porathe
5 Technical and scientific illustration 85
Clive Richards
6 The lessons of Isotype for information design 107
Robin Kinross
7 Marie Neurath: designing information books for young people 117
Sue Walker
8 Future, Fortune, and the graphic design of information 127
Eric Kindel
9 Some documents for a history of information design 147
Paul Stiff
10 Moral visualizations 161
Alberto Cairo
Part 2 Theoretical approaches
11 Graphic literacies for a digital age 177
Robert Waller
v
vi / Contents
12 Visual rhetoric in information design 204
Jeanne- Louise Moys
13 Multimodality and genre 221
John A. Bateman
14 Interactive information graphics 243
Wibke Weber
15 Social and cultural aspects of visual conventions in information
design 257
Charles Kostelnick
16 Textual reading on paper and screens 275
Anne Mangen
17 Applying science to design 291
Andrew Dillon
Part 3 Cognitive principles
18 Does my symbol sign work? 303
Theo Boersema and Austin Sorby Adams
19 Icons as carriers of information 315
Alison Black
20 Warning design 331
Michael S. Wogalter and Christopher B. Mayhorn
21 Diagrams 349
Barbara Tversky
22 Designing static and animated diagrams for modern learning
materials 361
Richard K. Lowe
23 Designing auditory alarms 377
Judy Edworthy
24 Design challenges in helping older adults use digital tablets 391
Patricia Wright
25 On- screen colour contrast for visually impaired readers 405
Frode Eika Sandnes
Contents / vii
26 Contrast set labelling 417
Ian Watson
27 Gestalt principles 425
Rune Pettersson
28 Information design research methods 435
Mary C. Dyson
29 Methods for evaluating information design 451
Will Stahl- Timmins
30 Public information documents 463
Dana P. Skopal
Part 4 Practical applications
31 Choosing type for information design 479
Paul Luna
32 Indexing and information design 487
Glenda Browne
33 When to use numeric tables and why 503
Sally Bigwood and Melissa Spore
34 Wayfinding perspectives 509
Colette Jeffrey
35 Designing for wayfinding 527
Fenne Roefs and Paul Mijksenaar
36 The problem of ‘straight ahead’ signage 541
Joan Zalacain
37 Park at your peril 553
Martin Cutts
38 Indoor digital wayfinding 561
Žiga Kropivšek
39 Visualizing storyworlds 577
Jona Piehl
40 Exhibitions for learning 591
María González de Cossío
viii / Contents
41 Form follows user follows form 607
Borries Schwesinger
42 Information design & value 619
Andrew Boag
43 The LUNAtic approach to information design 635
Robert Linsky
44 Information design as a (r)evolutionary educational tool 643
Barbara Predan and Petra Černe Oven
45 Design + medical collaboration 655
Mike Zender, William B. Brinkman, and Lea E. Widdice
46 Developing persuasive health campaign messages 669
Carel Jansen
47 Information design in medicine package leaflets 685
David Dickinson and Suzy Gallina
48 Using animation to help communication in e-PILs in Brazil 701
Carla Galvão Spinillo
49 Medical information design and its legislation 715
Karel van der Waarde
Index 733
Foreword
We’re constantly bombarded by messages, all trying to make us look, to
make us listen, to make us react. Some of these messages, however, are
more important than others. Maybe we’d be better off without the junk
mail, the commercials, and the cat videos, but often the information we
do need isn’t provided in a way we can readily understand; think of all the
instruction booklets, road maps, highway signs, electricity bills, tax forms,
and travel booking sites you’ve tried to read that never seem to have the
answer to your questions.
These familiar forms of communication all contain information which
may not necessarily excite or even interest you – but not understanding
it could be expensive. How you interpret some information could even
be a matter of life or death. The difference between being a survivor and
a casualty may be as simple as finding the ‘way out’ sign. Not to mention
badly designed voting forms deciding important elections.
When things become too complex, when an environment defies com-
mon sense, when technical requirements are allowed to prevail over
human considerations, then there’s a need for information design, for data
that is organized, written, and presented so everyone can perceive, under-
stand, and act upon it.
As long as complex or critical information was mainly displayed on
paper and static objects (think of forms or road signs), most graphic de-
signers regarded its design as something somehow beneath them; they
didn’t want to spend their time taking apart and reorganizing complex data
and making it intelligible. There were no gold medals to be had for doing
that. Graphic designers preferred to leave these thankless tasks to bureau-
crats or engineers. More money was made shaping beautiful objects that
made people buy things they didn’t need with money they didn’t have.
In the late 1980s, Richard Saul Wurman tried to elevate our profession
by calling us ‘information architects’. He recognized that information had
to sell itself by being more than functional, it had to be attractive as well.
While some of us felt that the new moniker sounded a trifle too grand –
well, American – we soon found out that he had a point. A new medium
was born in the mid 1990s: the internet’s world wide web. Indeed, a web-
site is architecture: access structures and navigational devices are vital, the
website’s structure must be logical, the elements have to interact with each
other, and the different functions need to be clearly distinguishable.
As soon as our phones could provide more information than all the
world’s encyclopaedias put together, signal overload turned into an obses-
sion. Now most of us suffer from ‘information anxiety’ – another phrase
Wurman had coined in the 1980s. We’re afraid to miss out, constantly
checking for even the most trivial of messages.
ix
