Halb5 Vortrag | 06.12.2000 | Fragezeichen

Michael Burke, London/Schwäbisch-Gmünd

Information design is a very imprecise and somewhat ambiguous term for an area of visual communication which has had such a significant impact on the development of our civilisation, and it is indeed surprising just how little credit it has been given (in contrast to say the arts) in particular, Science, Medicine, Economics, Navigation etc. The term information design originates in the anglo-saxon culture of the early 1960´s by way of differentiating between informing and persuading for example advertising where marketing plays a major role. This does not mean that the field of information design originates in the 1960´s as we can see from the examples shown in this talk, the area is as old as man himself if we take the first slide which shows one of the early cave paintings (25,000 years ago) traditionally classified as art/magic but it could equally be classified as being an early example of instructional graphics having a didactic function explaining his environment. It is however in the 18th century or the period we now refer to as the »Enlightenment« where the majority of the graphic convention came into being. There are many preconceptions about information design, one of the most frequently used being that it is very technical and not very visually exciting, but as we can see from many of the examples shown here the majority have an extremely high aesthetic value.

The slide lecture is structured in such a way in the brief period of time available to show the sheer diversity of graphic models which by and large have to do with problem orientated design.

It excludes illustration as this is a specialist area. Among the many examples of work by 18th and 19th century pioneers such as William Playfair, Alexander von Humboldt, Edmund Halley are examples by more contemporary designers notably Will Burtin and Richard Saul Wurman.

Tags: 2000