Information Design

"Information Design is the practice of gathering, filtering, and presenting information in accordance with effective design principles in order to understand --- and communicate to others --- the essence, the meaning of that information." 1

"Information Design is a field and approach to designing clear, understandable communications by giving care to structure, context, and presentation of data and information. As a field, its principles relate to all communications products and experiences, regardless of medium (print, broadcast, digital, online, etc.). Information Design is, primarily, concerned with clarity (instead of simplicity) and understanding" 2

In an increasingly infomation dense world, readers no longer have time for indepth reading. Instead, the reader quickly skims a design to decide on whether to delve deeper. It is the designer duty to ensure that their work catches the viewer's eye.

In a nutshell, information design informs the audience about something, be it statistics, directions, locations and many other examples. These can be in the forms of icons, graphs, maps, illustrations, and photographs.

1 Tech Head http://tech-head.com/info.htm

2 Nathan Shedroff http://www.nathan.com/ed/glossary/