ITAP2: Informational Design

Although informational design is not the foremost element of my design preference, it is non the less an important aspect to consider. As it is far from something I am widely knowledgable about, this itap lecture gave me several key figures and principals to bare in mind. A few I found most useful when looking further into their work are;
Grouping information and establishing a visual hierarchy by paying attention to detail, typography, colours, lines, spaces, message, legibility and other such matters.
As for the the inspirational people, I was given a list including

•  David Carson            •  Edward Tufte

•  Neville Brody            •  Richard Saul Wurman

•  Wim Crouwel            •  Erik Spiekermann

•  Rob Waller                •  Paul Mijksenaar

•  David Sless

To begin with, we have some informational design by Edward Tufte; the pioneer and claimed inventor of many common informational layouts such as the pie chart and bar graph. Above is one of his most famous designs portraying Napoleon's march to and from Moscow, showing information such as numbers of deaths and divided divisions in the army. By creating something as visually interesting and accurate as this, Tufte forged a way in displaying large quantities of complex information in an easy to understand and stimulating manner. Although I am unlikely to use styles/methods like this, I find it fascinating and important to understand the past/origin of informational design.

The designs above are by an artist called Paul Butt. These I find beautiful examples of informational display/layout due to the delicate combination balance of vibrant colours showing the stats, to the subtly textures and muted background. This gives a contrast of the tall, slick sans serif fonts along with sharp and crisp lined graph precision with a characteristically aged backing façade. This style aids in making it set apart from mass designed dull 'exel' graphs and makes the information far more visually exciting. The design on the left, to show computer disk space, is in based around a circular layout reminiscent in semiotic style of a CD/hard drive disk. The mixtures of graphs composed in these pieces along with key summations surrounding the main image enables audiences to read specific/individual statistics over the combination.

Nicholas Felton

Informational design though, doesn't have to be 'informational' per-se. While clear visual communication of statistics are extremely useful to the audience, the designs can be reduced to the point that graphs are so simplified and context dependant they can be interpreted as art. By removing numbers and key words, we are left with bold and mathematical patterns.
Some of these following designs are produced by studios such as 'Onformative' based in Berlin who specialise  in visualising data, and 'Accept & Proceed', a London based calendar graph studio. Information and further images on these fascinating and exceptional designs can be found in this link.

http://jessicasvendsen.com/category/information-design/

Accept & Proceed

Onformative

 As far as designer list given in the presentation, I find Erik Spiekermann's videos and philosophies on design absolutely inspiring. This video below is a 14minute talk on typography he did as an informal interview style. Elements such as how he likens the design to music creation is something I can relate to and now see in design, such as the onformative piece above (branching from his original typographical parallels). Not just this, but his strategies on drawing a design like your inspiration, and then drawing from memory days later to create a different looking idea (generating originality and diversion) is also a brilliant strategy I will apply to my work. I find Erik Spiekermann a hugely inspirational speaker on theory, concept and design; not to mention his actual work.

Conclusions and pieces I have found as result of this initially seemingly unimportant (as far as my personal design path is concerned) topic, has brought on some great improvements on my knowledge and view on these aspects of design.