Signs and portents

GE’s interactive web chart of energy use caught my eye. Design by Pentagram.

The enemy within, an article on the shortcomings of PowerPoint presentations, from the New York Times

What’s it all about?

After putting much effort into the research of my roads signs information design project, and creating design prototypes for testing, I find it interesting that many people have commented on liking the simple illustration above.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with anyone saying ‘that’s nice’.

But, it doesn’t actually reveal much about the project. Rather, it shows some randomly selected variants of the outlines of type (designed for preventing infill at night and maximising the impact of word within the footprint of the sign), but the important thing here is that people like the look and feel of it. Buried in the detail of my research and pressured for tangible results, I probably neglected a fundamental of communication design.

It’s an unquantifiable fundamental… namely, feel (or form) is as important as content (or function).

It reminds me of another lesson. ie. why did I neglect this - when it’s what I do for others every day?

• Well, time of course (this is self-initiated research, after all).
• But, more importantly, perspective or objectivity. Stepping back is much easier to do for a third party project. Perhaps this is one reason why few in-house teams produce great design outcomes?

What is it all about?

I the words of the late David Goulbourne, a colleague, friend and great designer, “It’s words and pictures, Mate!” If you get the right words and the right pictures, and get them in the right order, you’re really on a winner. But that’s a hell of a lot easier than it sounds, and in the process, some perspective helps a lot.

Confused about targets?

A visual representation of Kyoto Agreement targets, and how close, or far, we are from reaching them. Unfortunately, in this case the metaphor of a target dominates the information and this becomes something other than ‘information design’, but a noble effort, maybe it’s art?

From Information is beautiful

True north

As a lover of simplicity, clarity and information graphics, this has it all. A diagram representing the distribution of Olympic cities shows something of a bias to the northern hemisphere, don’t you think?

From Good Magazine

Ok, I’m familiar with a black spot, and ‘Minding the gap’ but a Gap Black Spot is new on me. Overkill? Or is that an unfortunate choice of words?

From 9gag:

Interactive information design…

…in the form of a graph from the New York Times based on a time use survey.

Click the image above (© NYT) to see the graph working. Clicking on the top right classifications will show changes in the pattern/data and mousing over the segments gives you more information.

Flight of fancy…

Envisioning information, in this case US flight patterns, created by Aaron Koblin using Flightview’s flight tracking information. The result is informative and graphically interesting.

From Wired magazine, if you click throught to the article you can toggle the view between altitudes of flight, model and make.