INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION GRAPHICS AND VISUALIZATIONS - WEEK 5

Historically, the designer’s primary concern has been the visual presentation of a message. Most aesthetic principles can be organized into two overlapping categories: structure and legibility.

Designers use grids to organize content and manage the clarity of a message. Newspapers, magazines, and periodicals are an obvious example due to their typographic grid system, but grids can be applied to most print, digital, and even three-dimensional work. A grid is an essential aesthetic device that will allow the designer to walk the reader through that content, one specific message at a time, without actually being there.

Grid systems allow the designer to create visual clarity through organization, movement, and grouping. Basic grid structures include margins, columns, and gutters. Adding horizontal lines provides additional visual continuity. The most common horizontal inclusion is a “hanging line” or “flow line” from which headlines, quotations, or body copy can flow. Grids allow the designer to easily delineate segments of the layout for specific content.

Grid can also impart a sense of time or show direction. Considering eye movement and rhythm when working with a grid enhances the skimming and scanning of information, helping the viewer to locate relevant content quickly. In addition, grids allow the designer to connect groups of content by placing them in proximity and alignment with one another.

In the context of design, “hierarchy” refers to the ordering of pictorial and typographic information sets so that the viewer can quickly gain an understanding of their relative importance. It requires two processes: first, a quick grab or overview; and second, a more detailed consumption of the content. In creating hierarchy, employ color, spacing, position, or other graphic devices to create that initial focal point.

Web designers consider variances between the way different monitors and platforms display color, and how luminosity affects color pairings. Print designers adjust for the way paper will absorb ink, how ink changes based on the hue of stock on which it’s print, how saturation and value change from coated to uncoated stocks and how varnished affect tone.

As we grow older, we begin to lose the ability to differentiate color clearly, and many people suffer from a loss of ocular focus. When that happens, it is best to follow ADA guidelines. These standards ensure that more uniform typefaces are used, and that overly thick or thin stroke widths, and overly condense (thin) or expanded (wide) letter proportions are not used. San-serif styles tend to work best as opposed to serif styles, which often have very thin areas within the letterforms. Also, the larger the type size is better.

This week is a very busy week so I couldn’t finish the chapter yet. I will finish and continue to summarize it. This is one of the really first books I’ve read about design. It is very good because it taught me many things about design especially information graphic. I know more about the history and the design fundamental. I hope that this book will help me to improve my skills for my projects, not only in information graphic class, but also other classes in CommDe.

INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION GRAPHICS AND VISUALIZATIONS - WEEK 4

Communication studies seek to understand how people transmit knowledge, share concept, and process information through language.

The study of communication is broad, continually evolving, and spas many disciplines. Designers can gain great insight by studying its tenets; indeed, many now refer to graphic development as “visual communication design.

Numerous lessons from communication theory can be applied directly to information design projects, providing insight on message structuring, language use. In this chapter I got to explore some of these theories with a focus on organization, familiarity, and literacy.

The organization of content directly affects our ability to receive a message.  AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action), a persuasive sales model that provide insight for the information designers on the structure, delivery, and acceptance of content, and is most successful when the needs of the customer or end user are fully understood. LATCH is another model for organizing information in to five ways, which are Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy. When you have limited time to communicate a message, stick to the facts. Place the most important information at the beginning of the story, followed by supporting content and then the detail.

At the start of every information design undertaking, the end user’s needs should be the primary focus. Forecasting their abilities, tools of choice, familiarity with technology, access to media, and so on, will help the design team to determine the appropriate artifact and information structure for clear communication. Combined with germane aesthetics, the message not only gets through, it is memorable.  These are paraphrased from Uncertainty Reduction Theory: 1. When we are uncertain, we actively seek information. 2. Certainty is enhance by similarities, and minimized by differences. 3. That of which we are uncertain becomes less favorable. Apply these concepts to you next design project, it will help reduce uncertainty and influence your end user to actively receive and process knowledge.

Literacy issues are of utmost importance to information designers because they affect the audience’s ability to receive messages. In a knowledge economy, our understanding of the term “literacy” has expanded. It no longer simply refers to reading and writing skills, but also focuses on the ability to find, process, interpret, and apply information. Information literacy describes the ability to locate, evaluate, and apply information, while distinguishing between legitimate and questionable sources, while visual literacy describes the ability to appreciate, analyze, create, and utilize visuals for communication and learning.

Semiotics, the study of signs and symbols as elements of language and communication, informs our ability to interpret images or other sensory input.

Icons are literal visual representations. For example, a drawing of a car looks like an actual car. Symbols are more abstract and may represent things that don’t have physical form. For example, the international symbol for “biohazard” is an abstracted series of circles. Indexes create connection between objects, using that which is easy to describe.

Communication is never static. Information designers must earnestly consider how cultural and contextual associations will affect the end user’s interpretation of a message.

INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION GRAPHICS AND VISUALIZATIONS - WEEK 3

In order to get good work, designers take inspiration from many sources: popular culture, nature, art, and science. It is good to explore the connections between human perceptions, thinking, and learning; how we transmit knowledge, share concepts, and process information through language; and how structure and legibility affect the visualization of massaging.

There are many different theories within educational and cognitive science communities regarding to processes and motivation that drive the way people learn.  Visual leaners prefer images. Verbal learners prefer experiencing new information in the form of written and spoken words. Kinesthetic learners acquire knowledge by doing. Different styles suit our developmental needs at different times of our lives. It is important to remember that most people learn through a combination of styles. By incorporating supporting layers of information in the form of type, images, tactile, and aural experiences, designer is able to engage multiple stimuli, creating a more memorable and meaningful experience.

Memory is a cognitive process that enables us to store, retrieve, and apply knowledge. It is divided in three stages: sensory input, short-term memory, and long-term memory. However, human brain could remember seven chunk, plus or minus two. A chunk is any single unit of information. Break complicated or lengthy content into smaller chucks is a good thing to do.

Weber postulates that, the rate of change of a type specimen that people tend to notice is 2 points.  This change is known as the “difference threshold”. Therefore, subsequent change would be apparent at 14 points, 16 points, 18 points, and so on. This can be applied during the creation of visual communication projects, helping designers make constructive choices.

According to some psychologists, humans perceive composition as a whole, rather than as a collection of individual forms. The individual variables of the graph are not as important as an overall understanding of the content. When creating visual displays of statistics, the information designer has two goals: be specific, clear and accurate; and give the audience a quick read.

Legibility is the term used to define the ease with which way-finding routes can be followed.  Design can provide this clarity. As we consider the space we wish to traverse, it is helpful to visualize it in term of points, lines, and planes. Legibility can also be enhanced by increasing the clarity and visibility of signage, icons, and directional indicators at decision-making points along a route.

“The goal of any information design task is to communicate a specific message to the end user in a way that is clear, accessible, and easy to understand.”

INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION GRAPHICS AND VISUALIZATIONS - WEEK 2

To forecast the future, it is important to have an understanding of the past. Cave painting and petroglyphs are the first examples we have of visual communication. It is difficult, in our visually dominated culture, to comprehend the importance of those first markings. Visual records, whether made for practical or spiritual purposes, transformed the way humans shared ideas, beliefs, and experiences.

Later on, the first writing we can recognize is cuneiform script, the Sumerian pictographic writing system.  Like image- and mark-making, writing is skill that modern humans take for grant. Writing provides a more precise means to share and distribute ideas among a large population. Writing enable us to record history, exchange information beyond geographic boundaries, communicate knowledge to future generations, and build upon the ideas of the past.

Maps, or cartography, are one of the earliest forms of information design. In the past, The Romans created accurate maps of newly conquered lands to manage the construction of roads and property right for their empire, for example. Advances in measurement and production technology led to more detail accurate map. Today, highly accurate satellite imagery is available to any Internet user via tools like Google Earth. Satellite navigation system are also available in automobiles and mobile phones.

William Playfair, Scottish engineer and political economist, believed that the visualization of data was easier to understand than written words. He created line graphs, bar graphs, and pie. In present, data sets could be compared easily.

“Words make division, pictures make connection”, Neurath, Austrian sociologist believes so. He created ISOTYPE, which stand for International System of Typographic Picture Education. It impacts on contemporary information design. Many of the symbols that we see in airports, museums, and public transit have their origins in this idea.

As technology develop, tons websites have been created. Websites have changed the way we do everything: conduct business, consumes, media, shop, interact with friends and family, maybe even find spouse. Designers were able to harness to potential of this new tool and forge it into something people could use. Fuel for the revolution was the practical application of user-centered graphic interface. Websites started to look, feel, and function well in familiar contexts; you could see a picture of sweater, zoom in, for a closer look, and place it into shopping cart to make your purchase. Technology is only half of the equation. Lacking the value created by the information design community, public acceptance of the web might have been uphill struggle.