Σχεδίαση Πληροφορίας

1. Σχεδίαση Πληροφορίας Σύντομη ιστορική περίληψη (3)

2. From the emphasis on the visual… “The visual language is capable of disseminating knowledge more effectively than almost any other vehicle of communication. With it man can express and relay his experiences in object form. Visual communication is universal and international: it knows no limits of tongue, vocabulary, or grammar, and it can be perceived by the illiterate as well as the literate. Visual language can convey facts and ideas in a wider and deeper range than almost any other means of communication.”(Kepes, 1944)

3. …to emphasis on the holistic • Design must provide people with appropriately accessible and useful information • Must take account of the complex institutional and social frameworks within which the designed artefacts have to function • Need to design whole systems, rather than just individual artefacts… • Transport systems..seen in DfA

4. A brief history of design and information design • It may seem that there is little in common between designing a tangible product such as a building or a machine and designing the ephemeral communication between a supplier and a consumer. In fact, there is a remarkable similarity in the overall principles and processes used (Jones 1980). • The branch of design known as information design is about managing the relationship between people and information so that the information is accessible and usable by people . As a professional practice it emerged in the twentieth century, bringing together and integrating the diverse crafts, skills and methods needed to make information accessible and usable by people.

5. History /2 • The term 'information design' is recent, reflecting the preoccupations and problems of an 'information society'; • But evidence suggests that information design goes back to the beginnings of human history (Marshack 1972). People living 40,000 years ago had information problems to solve, too. • Information - such as the markings on a bone fragment - were probably made by the maker/user as a reminder of knowledge already acquired.

6. MARKINGS ON A BONE CIRCA 40,000 YEARS AGO (SOURCE: MARSHACK 1972)

7. History /3 • As the skills of making artefacts developed and became more complex, a time came when the maker and user was not necessarily be the same person. • But pre-industrial societies were still sufficiently small for mutual understanding and shared experience to be a possibility, to guide those creating information so that others within the same society could use it; • and within these small populations, the number of people who were educated, literate/numerate, and knowledgeable enough to demand the information was smaller still.

8. History /4 • Any problem of accessibility or intelligibility of information tended to be seen as problems of authority. • Where mutual understanding did not occur, those in authority tried to impose their understanding on the rest of the community, regarding any questioning of the interpretation as a challenge to authority. • For example, when Vesalius, the great Renaissance anatomist, discovered that the classical authority on anatomy, Galen, had gained his knowledge of human anatomy by dissecting dogs and pigs, he could not announce this to the world; challenging Galen's authority was out of the question. • Vesalius dealt with discrepancies by providing students with Galen's drawing of the jaw and skull of a dog below his own drawing of the jaw and skull of a human, with a note saying that the dog's anatomy was included to better help explain Galen's descriptions of the parts of the body. Though he used this diagram as a frontispiece in many of his publications, he never explicitly challenged Galen's authority.

9. VESALIUS'S ILLUSTRATION OF THE UPPER SKULL OF A DOG BELOW THE UPPER SKULL OF A HUMAN. (SOURCE: VESALIUS [1543] 1973)

10. History cont’d /5 • Industrialisation led to an wide differentiation in the skills needed to create information. • To produce a book, for example, required the coordinated skills of an author, editor, illustrator, photographer, typesetter, platemaker, inkmaker, printer, binder, publisher, and distributor. • This differentiation of skills was also attended by an increasing complexity of the decision-making needed to undertake these tasks. • In order to plan, coordinate, and synthesise these diverse skills, the design profession began to emerge in the nineteenth century; by the early twentieth century, design had become totally separated from production and use. • But by drawing on the stock of signs and symbols commonly used within a culture's modes of discourse, a professional designer could still ensure that information was in the main accessible and usable. • The later years of the industrialisation period brought with it not only vast increases in population, but radical changes towards democracy, such as universal franchise and compulsory elementary education. • More people wanted more information; and for the proper running of society, it was becoming necessary for people to have more information.

11. Pre-industrial versus Post-industrial society (History /6) PRE-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY: MAKING ARTEFACTS • In small pre-industrial societies, the maker of an artefact was probably the user. There was no distinction between making and using. So signs and symbols for recording POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY: MANAGING PROCESS • In our own time many of the industrial technologies which led to the differentiation of skills are now converging around one technology: digital processing. • This has led to a corresponding convergence of some of the skills in the making of information artefacts. For example, the arrival of post-industrial multimedia has produced the convergence of film, television, sound and desktop publishing; if the creator of information using multimedia has the necessary skills, the new technology offers an unparalleled degree of technical control. • Similarly, with the arrival of desktop publishing software, we can no longer easily distinguish between writer, editor, typographer, illustrator and printer; convergence has given us a degree of personal technical control over the means of creating information which would have been impossible even twenty years ago.

12. History/7 • But this personal control comes at a cost. • First, as many of us have found, desktop publishing without information design skills is often little more than amateur desktop typesetting, and few desktop publishers have those skills. • Second, as our control over the technology has increased, our control over the means of discourse within society has diminished. • Our societies have become much more complex, socially diverse and specialised in functions. • No longer is it certain that the conventional signs and symbols and modes of discourse understood by one group are understandable to another group; one person's way of reading the signs and symbols of a discourse will not necessarily be the same as another person's. • Unlike the intimate pre-industrial and early industrial contexts in which the designer, producer and user of information were both physically and socially close, designers in post-industrial digital society are physically remote and socially different from many users of information—which is ironic, given the virtual proximity of users and designers via the internet. • Frequently, information designers have little in common socially or culturally with the information users they design for. There can be a profound gap of understanding between them.

13. Τέλος... Λίγο χιούμορ.. • Μπέρδεμα με τα μηνύματα...

14. Some problems encountered.. • “Confusion between the messages” • Functional information versus advertising information • e.g. the air travel sick bag with printed message • SHOULD YOU FEEL ILL DURING THE FLIGHT, PLEASE USE THIS BAG • But also being used to advertise a film processing servicewith the printed message • RELIVE THOSE WONDERFUL MEMORIES • A year later, no instructions about feeling sick.. • A year after that no advertisement either, just a plain bag - no message