Quotes & Sayings About Information Design

Designers provide ways into - and out of - the flood of words by breaking up text into pieces and offering shortcuts and alternate routes through masses of information. ( ... ) Although many books define the purpose of typography as enhancing the readability of the written word, one of design's most humane functions is, in actuality, to help readers avoid reading. — Ellen Lupton

Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty. — Emil Ruder

These days, information is a commodity being sold. And designers-including the newly defined subset of information designers and information architects-have a responsible role to play. We are interpreters, not merely translators, between sender and receiver. What we say and how we say it makes a difference. If we want to speak to people, we need to know their language. In order to design for understanding, we need to understand design. — Erik Spiekermann

I want to have all that scientific information that we're building be used in designing the future so that people who make geographic decisions - and here it's not just land-use planners, but it's everyone: foresters, transportation engineers, people who buy a house - can analyze all of these information layers and design a future. — Jack Dangermond

What it does, that other resources do not, is gather under one cover a body of broadly applicable design principles, coupled with practical ideas and suggestions for making specific instruments. If you are interested in exploring instrumental sound, building something musical from scratch, or composing and performing with anything other than the usual commercially made instruments, then you will be glad to have the information provided here. So will anyone, for that matter, who simply wants to better understand musical sound. Acoustical — Bart Hopkin

Clutter is not an attribute of information, clutter is a failure of design ... fix the design rather than stripping all the detail out of the map. — Edward Tufte

Having empathy for customers and users is a powerful force. When we empathize, we enhance our ability to receive and process information.77 Empathy in design requires deliberate practice. We must design experiments and interaction opportunities to connect with our customers and users in meaningful ways and challenge our assumptions, preconceptions, and prejudices. We need to assume the role of an interested inquirer, trying to understand the challenges they experience. — Jez Humble

In its report, the Cox Committee concludes that China is using stolen U.S. design information to speed up its deployment of a new nuclear missile force. — Charles Bass

Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled. — Paul Davies

What is to be sought in designs for the display of information is the clear portrayal of complexity. Not the complication of the simple; rather the task of the designer is to give visual access to the subtle and the difficult - that is, revelation of the complex. — Edward Tufte

What was often difficult for people to understand about the design was that there was nothing else beyond URLs, HTTP and HTML. There was no central computer "controlling" the Web, no single network on which these protocols worked, not even organisation anywhere that "ran" the Web. The Web was not a physical "thing" that existed in a certain "place". It was a "space" in which information could exist. — Tim Berners-Lee

Practice design, Not Decoration: Don't just make pretty talking points. Instead, display information in a way that makes complex information clear. — Nancy Duarte

Two observations take us across the finish line. The Second Law ensures that entropy increases throughout the entire process, and so the information hidden within the hard drives, Kindles, old-fashioned paper books, and everything else you packed into the region is less than that hidden in the black hole. From the results of Bekenstein and Hawking, we know that the black hole's hidden information content is given by the area of its event horizon. Moreover, because you were careful not to overspill the original region of space, the black hole's event horizon coincides with the region's boundary, so the black hole's entropy equals the area of this surrounding surface. We thus learn an important lesson. The amount of information contained within a region of space, stored in any objects of any design, is always less than the area of the surface that surrounds the region (measured in square Planck units). — Brian Greene

Even if the intelligent design of some structure has been established, it still is a separate question whether a wise, powerful, and beneficent God ought to have designed a complex, information-rich structure one way or another. For the sake of argument, let's grant that certain designed structures are not simply, as Gould put it, "odd" or "funny," but even cruel. What of it? Philosophical theology has abundant resources for dealing with the problem of evil, maintaining a God who is both omnipotent and benevolent in the face of evil. — William A. Dembski

If you're talking to an architect, he can look at a blank piece of paper, and once the initial design is there, the formula kicks in. Each room should have something unique and different about it - much the same way that in a song, every eight bars or so, a new piece of information should be introduced. — Ryan Tedder

The tech-spec story One structure for stories that prescribe is a technical specification story, which is used when preparing to turn over a user experience design for a detailed specification. A tech-spec story is not a complete technical specification, but it lays the groundwork for a design, collecting information from many sources, just as personas collect information about people into a — Whitney Quesenbery

Here's the general theory: To clarify, add detail. Imagine that. To clarify, add detail. And clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don't start throwing out information, instead fix the design. — Edward Tufte

Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to block information that the Chinese government does not wish its citizens to have. In liberal democracies around the world, this decision has generally been greeted with enthusiasm. — Peter Singer

Although we don't tend to think of libraries as media technologies, they are. The public library is, in fact, one of the most important and influential informational media ever created - and one that proliferated only after the arrival of silent reading and movable-type printing. A community's attitudes and preferences toward information take concrete shape in its library's design and services. [ ... ] The library provides, as well, a powerful symbol of our new media landscape: at the center stands the screen of the Internet-connected computers; the printed word has been pushed to the margins. — Nicholas Carr

If it's true there's a beginning to the universe, as modern cosmologists now agree, then this implies a cause that transcends the universe. If the laws of physics are fine-tuned to permit life, as contemporary physicists are discovering, then perhaps there's a designer who fine-tuned them. If there's information in the cell, as molecular biology shows, then this suggests intelligent design. To get life going in the first place would have required biological information; the implications point beyond the material realm to a prior intelligent cause. -Stephen C Meyer, PHD — Lee Strobel

In all situations where bad design decisions were made, people lacked some information that would have helped them make the right decision. — Jared Spool

The information contained in an English sentence or computer software does not derive from the chemistry of the ink or the physics of magnetism, but from a source extrinsic to physics and chemistry altogether. Indeed, in both cases, the message transcends the properties of the medium. The information in DNA also transcends the properties of its material medium. — Stephen C. Meyer

I believe I'm very normal. I'm hyper-normal. I'm more normal than anyone else I know. I think my thoughts, my indulgences, my desires, my pleasures may at first appear different, but that is only because they are more normal, not because they are more esoteric.
I believe I am bored when other people are bored, only faster. I am interested when others are interested, only more interested. But I also think I'm less, rather than more, intelligent than other people.
By indulging my interests through my life, and perhaps because of rather than despite many failures, I have been able to design my life. — Richard Saul Wurman

As a designer, you have to think in time and see things in sequence. You have to see information as a narrative form - Paul Mijksenaar quoted by Kim Baer — Paul Mijksenaar

If we don't have accurate information, if we are not able to tell difficult truth one to another, we will never be able to effectively design a policy for Iraq. — Jack Reed

Why do we read with greed? (Or play, or design, etc.?) We want to fill our minds with knowledge the way others want to fill their bellies with food. Information replaces confusion, which many of us experience in interactions with others. It is a place to focus, apart from all the external stimuli in our homes, schools, shops, etc. It is completely within our control how much we want to let in, unlike dealing with people, who are unpredictable and uncontrollable. (Even those of us who are in our own bubble, who don't read or seem to look outward much, may have a rich internal world and not yet have such a need to connect.) — Rudy Simone

Schoolchildren are not taught how to distinguish accurate information from inaccurate information online - surely there are ways to design web-browsers to help with this task and ways to teach young people how to use the powerful online tools available to them. — Howard Rheingold

I'm a big believer in the emotion of design, and the message that's sent before somebody begins to read, before they get the rest of the information; what is the emotional response they get to the product, to the story, to the painting - whatever it is. — David Carson

I am trying to represent design through drawing. I have always drawn things to a high degree of detail. That is not an ideological position I hold on drawing but is rather an expression of my desire to design and by extension to build. This has often been mistaken as a fetish I have for drawing: of drawing for drawing's sake, for the love of drawing. Never. Never. Yes, I love making a beautiful, well-crafted drawing, but I love it only because of the amount of information a precise drawing provides — Neil Denari

How is the body, including the observing body, becoming a component of new machines, economies, apparatuses, whether social, libidinal, or technological? In what way is subjectivity becoming a precarious condition of interface between rationalized systems of exchange and networks of information? — Jonathan Crary

A successful solution to the client's design needs requires a collaboration of my skills, talents and knowledge with the client's information base, history in their industry and personality. — Jeff Fisher

I started in the industry in Public Relations, Quality Assurance, Information Systems and furniture moving. I tried my hand in design and haven't looked back. I'm fond of hackysack, racquetball, BBQ grilling, hanging out with my wife and friends — Dan Miller

And I came to the conclusion that in any project we design and develop, the size and degree of complexity of the information and control systems inscribed in it are the crucial factors, so that the all-embracing and absolute perfection of the concept can in practice coincide, indeed ultimately must coincide, with its chronic dysfunction and constitutional instability. — W.G. Sebald

When I work with experimental gadgets, like new variations on virtual reality, in a lab environment, I am always reminded of how small changes in the details of a digital design can have profound unforeseen effects on the experiences of the humans who are playing with it. The slightest change in something as seemingly trivial as the use of a button can sometimes completely alter behavior patterns.
For instance, Stanford University researcher Jeremy Bailenson has demonstrated that changing the height of one's avatar in immersive virtual reality transforms self-esteem and social self-perception. Technologies are extensions of ourselves, and, like the avatars in Jeremy's lab, our identities can be shifted by the quirks of gadgets. It is impossible to work with information technology without also engaging in social engineering. — Jaron Lanier

Optimal design delivers information in ways that are useful, beautiful and improve the experience of all involved: audience, client and designer. — Maggie Macnab

Biddy entered on our special agreement, by imparting some information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old English D which she had imitated from the heading of some newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me what it was, to be a design for a buckle. Of — Charles Dickens

From testimonials and personal experience we have enough information to conclude that IT'S POSSIBLE TO DESIGN AND LIVE AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE — Jim Rohn

There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. If something is cluttered and/or confusing, fix your design. — Edward Tufte

In a biological system, the software builds its own hardware, but design is critical, and if you start with digital information, it has to be really accurate. — Craig Venter

Clutter is not a property of information. Clutter is a failure of design. — Edward Tufte

The skyscraper is but a physical realization of the information contained in the architect's design. — Brian Greene

... what society overwhelmingly asks for is snake oil. Of course, the snake oil has the most impressive names - otherwise you would be selling nothing - like "Structured Analysis and Design", "Software Engineering", "Maturity Models", "Management Information Systems", "Integrated Project Support Environments" "Object Orientation" and "Business Process Re-engineering". — Edsger Dijkstra

After all, as Edward Tufte once said, "Overload, clutter, and confusion are not attributes of information, they are failures of design. — Golden Krishna

If you have no intuitive sense of design, then call yourself an "information architect" and only use Helvetica. — David Carson

My wish is to help design the future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their innate sense of wonder and work together. Help me build the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can embark on intellectual adventures by engaging and connecting with information and mentoring online. I also invite you, wherever you are, to create your own miniature child-driven learning environments and share your discoveries. — Sugata Mitra

The secret of DNA's success is that it carries information like that of a computer program, but far more advanced. Since experience shows that intelligence is the only presently acting cause of information, we can infer that intelligence is the best explanation for the information in DNA. — Jonathan Wells

What's next for technology and design? A lot less thinking about technology for technology's sake, and a lot more thinking about design. Art humanizes technology and makes it understandable. Design is needed to make sense of information overload. It is why art and design will rise in importance during this century as we try to make sense of all the possibilities that digital technology now affords. — John Maeda

It is relatively easy to design for the perfect cases, when everything goes right, or when all the information required is available in proper format. — Donald Norman

An organization is a factory that manufactures judgments and decisions. Every factory must have ways to ensure the quality of its products in the initial design, in fabrication, and in final inspections. The corresponding stages in the production of decisions are the framing of the problem that is to be solved, the collection of relevant information leading to a decision, and reflection and review. An organization that seeks to improve its decision product should routinely look for efficiency improvements at each of these stages. The — Daniel Kahneman

Internet safety begins at home and that is why my legislation would require the Federal Trade Commission to design and publish a unique website to serve as a clearinghouse and resource for parents, teachers and children for information on the dangers of surfing the Internet. — Mike Fitzpatrick

I think the reason novels are regarded to have so much more 'information' than films is that they outsource the scenic design and cinematography to the reader ... This, for me, is a powerful argument for the value and potency of literature specifically. Movies don't demand as much from the player. Most people know this; at the end of the day you can be too beat to read but not yet too beat to watch television or listen to music. — Brian Christian

Good design is a matter of discipline. It starts by looking at the problem and collecting all the available information about it. If you understand the problem, you have the solution. It's really more about logic than imagination. — Massimo Vignelli

Deep down, creationists realize they will never win factual arguments with science. This is why they have construed their own science-like universe, known as Intelligent Design, and eagerly jump on every tidbit of information that seems to go their way. — Frans De Waal

The key utility measure is user happiness. Speed of response and the size of the index are factors in user happiness. It seems reasonable to assume that relevance of results is the most important factor: blindingly fast, useless answers do not make a user happy. However, user perceptions do not always coincide with system designers' notions of quality. For example, user happiness commonly depends very strongly on user interface design issues, including the layout, clarity, and responsiveness of the user interface, which are independent of the quality of the results returned. — Christopher D. Manning

Superior execution is vital to sustaining the success initiated by an innovative service concept. An innovator's service quality is usually more difficult to imitate than its service concept. This is because quality service comes from inspired leadership throughout an organization, a customer-minded corporate culture, excellent service-system design, the effective use of information and technology, and other factors that develop slowly in a company, if at all. — Leonard L. Berry

An author's extraliterary utterance (blunt information), prenovel or postnovel, may infiltrate journalism; it cannot touch the novel itself. Fiction does not invent out of a vacuum, but it invents; and what it invents is, first, the fabric and cadence of language, and then a slant of idea that sails out of these as a fin lifts from the sea. The art of the novel (worn yet opulent phrase) is in the mix of idiosyncratic language - language imprinted in the writer, like the whorl of a fingertip - and an unduplicable design inscribed on the mind by character and image. Invention has little capacity for the true-to-life snapshot. It is true to its own stirrings. — Cynthia Ozick

Flow systems have two basic features (properties). There is the current that is flowing (for example, fluid, heat, mass, or information) and the design through which it flows. — Adrian Bejan

Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space. — Edward R. Tufte

I feel that every day, all of us now are being blasted by information design. It's being poured into our eyes through the Web, and we're all visualizers now; we're all demanding a visual aspect to our information. There's something almost quite magical about visual information. It's effortless; it literally pours in. — David McCandless

DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created. — Bill Gates

Well, the whole story is in the book, but the short answer is that I was the first information architect in an organization that was traditionally design-oriented, and I felt I needed a tool to help me gain the trust and support of my colleagues. — Jesse James Garrett

Then what exactly is it that you design?"
He gave a proud smile.
"Bitless compositions."
"Bitless? You mean, from bits, the units of information?"
"No, Mr. Tichy, the units of being bitten. — Stanislaw Lem

What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be "boiled down" and "simplified"? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading. Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information. — Edward R. Tufte

This interplay of military and academic motives became ingrained in the Internet. "The design of both the ARPANET and the Internet favored military values, such as survivability, flexibility, and high performance, over commercial goals, such as low cost, simplicity, or consumer appeal," the technology historian Janet Abbate noted. "At the same time, the group that designed and built ARPA's networks was dominated by academic scientists, who incorporated their own values of collegiality, decentralization of authority, and open exchange of information into the system."90 These academic researchers of the late 1960s, many of whom associated with the antiwar counterculture, created a system that resisted centralized command. It would route around any damage from a nuclear attack but also around any attempt to impose control. — Walter Isaacson

Nature's design is fully economical. Human design follows this model when it minimizes information and maximizes understanding. — Maggie Macnab

Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory. — William A. Dembski

Simplicity design axiom: The complexity of the information appliance is that of the task, not the tool. The technology is invisible. — Donald A. Norman

Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication. Or, worse, to fault viewers for a lack of understanding. — Edward Tufte

Imagine an organization where the physical plant honors the mission, celebrates the employees, shares information, holds people accountable, shapes the outside world's view and helps drive performance. That would be an organization which uses visual management. — Stewart Liff

If you can design the physical space, the social space, and the information space together to enhance collaborative learning, then that whole milieu turns into a learning technology. — John Seely Brown

UX designers have to constantly learn about human psychology, interaction design, information architecture and user research techniques, just to name a few, in order to create the right solutions to a user's problems. — Jenifer Tidwell

An essential design feature of the associative machine is that it represents only activated ideas. Information that is not retrieved (even unconsciously) from memory might as well not exist. — Daniel Kahneman

The artist and writer Mervyn Peake, invalided out of military service, joined the Design, Poster and Visualising Group of the Ministry of Information in 1942. — Laura Brandon

If budget planning requires gathering information from people who may not always have the incentive to disclose that information, then the principles of mechanism design can definitely be of use in such planning. — Eric Maskin

A metaphor for good information design is a map. Hold any diagram against a map and see how it compares. — Edward Tufte

I see graphic design as the organization of information that is semantically correct, syntactically consistent and pragmatically understandable. — Massimo Vignelli

Information design addresses the organization and presentation of data: its transformation into valuable, meaningful information. — Nathan Shedroff

The multiple failures of top-down design, and the omnipresence of unintended consequences, can be attributed in large part, to the absence of relevant information. — Cass R. Sunstein

Information design has been around since the 1970s. Pioneers like Yale University design guru Edward Tufte and design agency Pentagram have long known and used its power. But now with the rise of the Internet, it's having something of a second birth. — David McCandless

Good information architecture enables people to find and do what they came for. Great information architecture takes find out of the equation: the site behaves as the visitor expects. Poor or missing information architecture neuters content, design, and programming and devalues the site for its owners as well as the audience it was created to serve. It's like a film with no director. The actors may be good, the sets may be lovely, but audiences will leave soon after the opening credits. — Jeffrey Zeldman

The contemporary design argument does not rest, however, on gaps in our knowledge but rather on the growth in our knowledge due to the revolution in molecular biology. Information theory has taught us that nature exhibits two types of order. The first type is produced by natural causes-shiny crystals, hexagonal patterns in oil, whirlpools in the bathtub. But the second type-the complex structure of the DNA molecule-is not produced by any natural processes known to experience. — Nancy Pearcey

Traditional agriculture was labour intensive, industrial agriculture is energy intensive, and permaculture-designed systems are information and design intensive. — David Holmgren

By supporting all the links in the building chain and giving them an easy, intuitive tool for sharing model-based project information, GTeam enhances workflows and improves communication from design through to fabrication and assembly. — Greg Lynn

Many anthropologists work with a concept called embodied knowledge - tacit, nonscientific knowledge - and look for ways to incorporate such information into product design. — Katie Hafner

If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page ... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful. — Adrian Frutiger