Information Design: Research and Practice

Information Design provides citizens, business and government with a means of presenting and interacting with complex information. It embraces applications from wayfinding and map reading to forms design; from website and screen layout to instruction. Done well it can communicate across languages and cultures, convey complicated instructions, even change behaviours. Information Design offers an authoritative guide to this important multidisciplinary subject. The book weaves design theory and methods with case studies of professional practice from leading information designers across the world. The heavily illustrated text is rigorous yet readable and offers a single, must-have, reference to anyone interested in information design or any of its related disciplines such as interaction design and information architecture, information graphics, document design, universal design, service design, map-making and wayfinding.

Professor Alison Black is Professor of User-Centred Design and directs the Centre for Information Design Research. A psychologist by training she has always worked with designers, both in industry and academia. Her research focuses on public communication in health settings and on the presentation of weather and extreme events forecasting.

Professor Paul Luna both researches and designs complex texts. He designed the last two editions of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, has written on the relationship between typography and lexicography, and has also published a study of the typography of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary. Paul is co-editor of the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication’s publication Typography Papers.

Ole Lund is Associate Professor in the Department of Design at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and a former Programme Director for the MA Information Design at the University of Reading. He has a special interest in the history, theory and practice of typography, i.e. design for reading.

Professor Sue Walker is an academic with an interest in typography and language, the design of learning materials for young children, and information design in public services. She is a partner in the information design consultancy, Text Matters, and was one of the principal researchers on the AHRC-funded ’Isotype revisited’ project.

The Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at University of Reading has an outstanding and international reputation for teaching and research in information design. Graduates of its undergraduate, masters and doctoral programmes have helped shape information design across the public and private sector, working in areas as diverse as overseas aid, through urban transport planning, to mobile phone interface design. The Department’s Centre for Information Design Research brings together expertise in writing, graphic design, interaction design and psychology, carrying out projects in partnership with users of information design, such as health providers, government agencies and the insurance industry.