A great deal of graphic design is concerned with information – how it is presented, navigated, understood and used. Sometimes information is quite technical, such as medication instructions; other information might be quite dense, such as bus timetables. Information design is the discipline of laying out and displaying information, whether it be simple or technical, so that it is easy to understand and is usable.
There are lots of other examples of where information design is used. Food packaging carries informational elements such as nutrition guidelines, as well as product branding. Annual reports, theatre programmes and retail catalogues all have an informational element which influence how they are designed. And most websites contain a large quantity of content which has to be categorised, organised and presented in a way that is easily navigable.
Good information design may aid convenience, as does Harry Beck’s famous London Underground topological map, or it may bring an aesthetic quality to potentially dry documents, such as Oscar & Ewan’s typographic treatment of a proposal form, designed for London art gallery Terrace.
Original London Underground map designed by Harry Beck in 1933.
At other times it might be imperative that information is visually clear. For example, pharmaceutical firm Almus hired design group Creative Leap to redesign all its packaging in order to reduce the number of dispensing and dosage errors resulting from unclear information.
Pharmaceutical packaging designed by Creative Leap
An information designer's role is firstly to organise information – to set up a hierarchy of importance and prominence – and secondly to translate this structure into an effective and appealing piece of visual communication. Applied Information Group creative director Tim Fendley explains: ‘Information design is interested in quite complex things. It is interested in things that are functional. It is often portrayed that to be functional, information needs to look boring, but I am of the belief that it doesn’t; it can be beautiful and functional.’
Watch Tim Fendley and other graphic designers talk about what they do
Because of the particular technical skills required to plan ‘information architecture’, some designers specialise in information design, although generally it is described as a part of graphic design. ‘Graphic information design is a specialism within graphic design, where the designer studies how people react to words and images in different formats and enjoys exploring how designing different ways of presenting information can impact a person’s response to that information,’ says Sunita Yeomans, creative controller of publications at retailer Argos. ‘An experienced information designer will present information differently depending on the target audience, understanding differences in information processing between men and women, old and young, cultural groups or demographics.’
Fendley agrees that information design is about focusing on the end-user, using an iterative design process to see what works and what doesn’t. ‘As a designer you are thinking about the end user. If you are not thinking about the end user then you are an artist, and that is great, but artists aren’t really interested in the end user; they are interested in making their statement. So, we get our designs when they are still early sketches and we take them on the street, or we show people and we work with them.’
Wayfinding can be seen as a particular specialism of information design, one which arguably moves further from traditional graphic design and into areas of architecture and even urban planning. Although the designers creating the signage graphics may also conduct preliminary wayfinding studies – that is, research how people navigate and understand spaces – wayfinding is sometimes undertaken by specialists in their own right.
The importance of clear wayfinding and signage systems is apparent: imagine a hospital where patients and visitors are easily disoriented and confused due to poor wayfinding. Transport interchanges are another important zone for information designers specialising in wayfinding. Heathrow Airport, for example, is thought to be the most complex people moving environment in the world.
Find out more about wayfinding and graphic design.
Because information design is often one aspect of a wider design and communication process, designers working in this field are likely to collaborate with other disciplines, including product designers, branding consultants, copywriters, illustrators, photographers, printers, web developers and programmers.
Terrace exhibition proposal form designed by Oscar & Ewan 2008.