Specialty 1 Info Design

Info design is often described as "a visual reduction of complex experience into a graphic representation." and at it's core is helping people find their way by structuring information to get them from point a to point b. This can of course be a spacial way finding but it is also educational. We read through instructions and reports and find our way from confusion to understanding by many of the same methods we use to find our way home from an unfamiliar part of town. Information design is important in many aspects of design like website building or designing huge text heavy documents with no life to the cold statistics, but info design is particularly important to me because of it's value for social design. To make a compelling case that a solution to a social problem is necessary, to convince someone to sponsor your cause or project you have got to show them the statistics and not just numbers, you have to show them in comparison to something else they will understand. Visual comparisons as well as chart and table design have always been though for me. Info design is in a lot of ways a very powerful tool because it is the ability to give someone information that can compel them into action.  Info design requires excellent typographic skills as well as an acute sense of empathy, we have to be sensitive to what the audience is already thinking and what we need to tell them to change their mind. We must understand the audience's frame of reference and put large complex information in the context they will best understand it from.

The most important elements of a successful data graphic is, clarity and understand ability as well as authorship and expression.