Information Design

It's been called "information anxiety," and who doesn't suffer from it? 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 and the commercials, but often the information we do need isn't provided in a way we can readily understand; think of all the instruction booklets, road, highway signs, electricity bills and tax forms 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.

Clearly, there's a crying need for information design in our modern world, for data that is organized, written and presented so everyone can understand it. When the design of information is left to chance the result is information anxiety. And when things become too complex, when an environment defies common sense, when technical requirements are allowed to prevail over human considerations, then someone has to intervene.

This is where the information designer comes in. It's his (or her) job to know that what's required here is more than just "good" design. What's the point of creating a swell-looking layout and printing it in attractive colors when all the wrong questions are being asked in all the wrong ways?

The design of information may first involve translating a message from one language to another, or from official or technical jargon into plain English, or from complicated diagrams into straightforward listings. Information design, because it must reach everyone, is as much about process as anything else.

This is more than likely to be news to your average graphic designer. Most designers are conditioned to regarding the design of information as something that is somehow beneath them; they'd rather be left alone to design posters, logos and glossy brochures, which probably pay better anyway. And besides, who wants to spend their time trying to figure out what information is needed and where it should be put? Most designers would prefer to leave these thankless tasks to printers, result typesetters, engineers, architects and bureaucrats. As a, the value of information design has been neglected and ignored.

There are some encouraging signs that information design is finally coming into its own. Identifying the problem - the bogeyman we call information anxiety - is the first step. And more and more businesses are now discovering the advantages of clear communications. Their response signals a fundamental shift in design thinking to a model where something is more efficient, more practical and - what a surprise - more affordable, precisely because it is rationally designed.

Which is not to say that information designers don't have their work cut out for them. Good information design must communicate by convincing us, not just browbeating us. And information designers would do well to keep something else in mind. They need to know, as clever advertising people have long known, that nothing convinces people more than being entertained. Show me a form that's fun to fill out, a sign that makes me smile, or a set of instructions I'll want to take to bed to read, and maybe all this information anxiety won't seem so painful after all.