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Information design and the grotesque

My name is Dane Watkins and I am currently undertaking a practice base PhD at Falmouth and supervised by Mike Phillips at iDAT. My research is studying the use of playfulness in information design.

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It has driven the design of websites, which have sacrificed a playful experimentation for functional and utilitarian usability. The rhetoric of Information Design dictates that communication should be easy, efficient and effective.

Gerd Arntz web archive www.gerdarntz.org/

These ideas can be traced back to the early part of the twentieth century when Otto Neurath worked with Mary Neurath and Gerd Arntz to develop the ISOTYPE in order to make communication easier and more effective. Neurath aspired to a universal, objective and neutral form of communciation, the designs attempted to strip the image of all historical associations yet now they are obviously of their time.

Gerd Arntz Illustrations for the socialist union magazine Die Proletarische Revolution, 1928

Another key thinker is Edward Tufte, who in his seminal book The quantitative display of visual information said that Graphical excellence is that which gives the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space This sense of graphical excellence is no longer confined to the narrow world of graphs and charts.

Information is beautiful

The journalist David McCandless has promoted information design through his blog and books. Knowledge is Beautiful is the follow up to Information is beautiful. In the introduction McCandless states that he loves the universal ideals of truth and beauty

Aristotle said that The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree. But do we want a culture solely based on order and symmetry. Are there other examples of beauty?

Venus de willendorf

And truth as Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook has stated is complicated.

As digital technology converts analogue knowledge into quantifiable data the underlying principles of information design establish a greater importance and relevance.

In the twentieth century Media corporations created spectacles to attract the viewers attention and stir their stupor.

The viewer has evolved from passive reciever into active user. The focus has changed into creating efficient systems for users to probe and traverse their networks, simplicity has become key. The spectacle has been toned down as too confusing and replaced with the easiness of user centered design

USABILITY

Preview AudiencesUser Testing

Types of display design in black-on-white version: numerical design (top);analogue design (middle); ambient design (bottom) Bath University.

Conclusion: The numerical design was the all-round winner in task performance, leading to enhanced communication of energy-use changes compared to the analogue and ambient designs. Chiang, T., Natarajan, S. and Walker, I. (2012) A laboratory test of the efficacy of energy display interface design,Energy and Buildings, 55, pp. 471480. doi: 10.1016/j.enbuild.2012.07.026.

Types of display design in black-on-white version: numerical design (top);analogue design (middle); ambient design (bottom) Bath University.

GrotesqueGrotto-esque

Luttrell Psalter c. 1325-1335

Luttrell Psalter c. 1325-1335

Unlike contemporary digital signage which in many cases dont even rise to the limited expectations of information design. So could the grotesque add meaning and diversity to the limited world of information design

As part of my practice based PhD I have been looking at how the grotesque could be used in a digital system. The Games Academy at Falmouth University wanted to track how often students were using the studio and encourage them to come in more often.

We developed a system that logged the barcodes of their student cards

This is the holding page, it runs on a continuous loop until something happens

When the students logs in, their bar code is scanned

Like all apis there are error messages if the system cant recognise the bar code.

The holding page could be used as a digital sign, showing news feeds

Transport times

The weather

It could show the the busyness of the canteen

Information is never that accurate nor that definite and I belive there is a case for the use of the grotesque in idioms and imagery to explain our world.

Joris Hoefnagel about 1591 1596Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta

Arent van Boltens 1604 -1616

Basil Wolverton 1909-1978

Ken Reid 1970s

f.150v Luttrell Psalter c. 1325-1335

Cylinder Complex by Basil Wolverton 1972

World War 2 Malaria leaflet by Theodor Geisel AKA Dr Seuss

M16 Manual by Will Eisner

Freedom Fighters comic produced by the CIA to undermine the Sandinista Government

a 16-page comic book published in 1957 by the Fellowship of Reconcilation

Boiling line

ticketing

Gerd Arntz