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Information Design Workbook: Graphic approaches, solutions, and inspiration plus 30 case studies
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| List Price: | $40.00 |
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Product Description
Currently there is nothing as comprehensive about this topic available.
This new volume takes a methodical yet comprehensive approach to conveying the fundamentals of avant-garde, innovative, information design by examining history, theory, criticism, technology and media, process, method, and practice.
Opening with a very brief history followed by an instructive breakdown of the discipline, readers will get an intimate understanding of the complexities of crafting information design to effectively improve communication both functionally and aesthetically. The back half of the book contains a wide range of case studies from design firms around the world so designers can see the techniques previously outlined in the first half of the book. The author critiques and explains why the design is successful in terms of formal quality (Aesthetics) and function (How does it improve communication?).
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #19755 in Books
- Published on: 2008-05-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 240 pages
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
The firm's client list ranges from nonprofit organizations, such as the Prostate Cancer Foundation, UCLA, and Chamber Music Los Angeles, to consumer-oriented companies, such as Nike, Nissan, and Hilton Hotels.
Customer Reviews
This book practices what it preaches, with tons of examples
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R19WB24ZB8YXSL Infographic artists or graphic designers who create designs to communicate ideas to people should like this book.
The summary on the preface accurately describes this book and I'll quote it here.
This book:
- Leads you through the mindset and kind of thinking that support good information design.
- Gives you an overview of the type of processes and tools you can use to create effective information design.
- Shows real-world examples of successful products
- Presents interviews with some of the premier practitioners working in the field today.
This book talks about high level concepts to give an overview to information design. The first four chapters explains the need for effective design and provides lots of examples where they are used, and how helpful they are. Some examples include direct mail, litigation graphics, etc. Interviewees relates on what works and what doesn't through their own experience.
There are several tools include to help designers. They include personas and scenario simulation, research and testing and even mundane stuff like using plain language. Of course not all might relate to everyone. I'm a newspaper artist and I don't do testing for every graphic that I produce. But they do give results for tests conducted, which can be applied to different fields.
One chapter is devoted to design principles with examples from all medium.
The last five chapters are the case studies. Each touches on a different medium and each comes with 6 real life success stories. That's 30 set of experience from the industry you can learn from.
I'll like to conclude that this book practices what it preaches. The information on the pages is laid out nicely and easy to absorb.
Here's the table of contents:
Preface - Approaching information design from a user-centric point of view
1. About information design. What is it? Who is doing it? Why is it important?
2. Process: Discovery. A step-by-step look at the research and discovery process
3. Process: Prototypes and Testing. How user research and testing help to ensure successful design
4. Design Toolkit: Visual devices to help communicate information
5. Printed Matter Case Studies. Magazines, packaging and corporate communications
6. Information Graphics Case Studies. Maps, charts, and diagrams
7. Interactive Case Studies. Websites and other screen-based projects
8. Enviromental Case Studies. Wayfinding and exhibits
9. Experimental Case Studies. Information design that pushes the envelope.
There are more pictures on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for my blog's link.
Good Book!!
I am the Director of Education for the Society for Environmental Graphic Design and I must say that while I have never met the authors, I am amazed at their ability to put all the issues related to Information Design in a grand context. While I work in only one small area of ID it is great to see the issues across many disciplines and the book is well put together.
Keep up the good work.
Primer for graphic designers
As an information designer and interaction designer, I was disappointed in the book. It was clearly written for graphic designers by a graphic designer, treats information design as a flavor (or at most, an extension) of graphic design, and consists largely of the standard portfolio-show-off fare that you'll find in so many graphic design books.
It is very, very basic. The page-to-insight ratio is quite low. Normally, I'm underlining and circling things all the time in books as I read them; I doubt that I circled more than half a dozen things in the entire 230+ pages. One of those half-dozen was an excellent analogy likening good information design to an uneventful flight.
The material about user-centered design is not inaccurate, but it is dismaying to realize that the book's target audience is visual designers who have apparently never considered that satisfying the needs of end users might be more important than indulging their own egos. Any practicing information designer who has to be told such basics as though they were insights is in big trouble.
You'll get a lot more out of the books of Edward Tufte, Stephen Few, and Richard Saul Wurman.
