Graphics International on information design

The new issue of Graphics International (#92) has a special report on Information Graphics. Highlights include:

• pieces on legendary info-designers Herbert Bayer - creator of the revolutionary GeoAtlas (1953) - and Will Burtin.


• a great essay on the origins of graphic devices and tools we take for granted today; such as the work of William Playfair, who developed the bar chart and pie diagram in the late 18thC [though doesn't even mention any recent innovations in information representation]


• a review of Richard Saul Wurman's Understanding USA - a brave attempt to summarise America through infographics - which, ironically, has failings of shoddy usability and information overload. The book's website has the thing fully readable and downloadable as PDF - be interesting to see if problems are solved in the online versions.


• short piece on the development of predictive weather maps from 1863's innovations enabled by the railway and the electric telegraph, to today's multi-layered montages  [found this - kinda related, on Mappa Mundi]


• whimsical piece on the passing of the Solari di Udine information boards at Waterloo station.


• very interesting piece on the new London bus maps (a theme already picked up by Matt Jones). Unofficially called 'spider maps' - due to a magnified 'body' of detail with 'legs' of less-detailed routes emanating from it - the maps are a vast improvement on any previous bus maps: employing the 45° trick from Harry Beck's tube map, using colour coding, differing granularity etc.

Not part of the special report but linked is a short piece on Rose-Innes' work for the new British Galleries at the V&A, designing new typefaces, signage and navigation. Typically, there's more talk of the type than the navigation, but I like this quote from Crispin Rose-Innes on their design - pointers for web designers here:

"It should be clear and clean and elegant but supportive. The graphics shouldn't dominate or distract."

There you go. Now you don't have to read it. (And you won't get annoyed by this issue's vast expanses of text with missing punctuation marks. Oops.)