Katz - Designing Information

Cover image: Joel Katz

Cover design: Joel Katz

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Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved

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Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Katz, Joel, 1943 author.

Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design /
Joel Katz.

p. cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-118-34197-1 (hardback); ISBN 978-1-118-41686-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118
42009-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-44625-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-44629-4 (ebk)

1. Brand name products. 2. Branding (Marketing) 3. Trademarks-Design. I. Title.

HD69.B7W43 2011

658.827--dc22

2010049604

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Information is not knowledge and
knowledge is not wisdom.

James Gleick
The Information: A History,
a Theory, a Flood

I certainly would be interested to
work with a serious agency that can
offer a flow of freelance projects.
My specialty is Information Design,
Branding, and Design Writing. You
can preview my portfolio and my
blog at.

Designer (not this one) responding to
recruiting agency inquiry

HmmIve actually never heard
of Information Design before (and
Ive been working in the creative
industry for over 10 years now!).
Maybe it would be best for us to talk
over the phone. Call me when you
have a moment.

Recruiting agency responding to designer

We want the book to look different
enough so that teachers will want to
buy it, but not so different that they
feel they have to read it in order to
teach it.

Textbook publisher (not this one) to
designer (this one) on the design
of a new middle school geography
textbook

Contents

14 1 Aspects of Information Design
The nature of information

42 2 Qualitative Issues
Perceptions, conventions, proximity

78 3 Quantitative Issues
Dimensionality, comparisons, numbers, scale

114 4 Structure, Organization, Type
Hierarchy and visual grammar

154 5 Finding Your Way?
Movement, orientation, situational geography

190 6 Documents
Stories, inventories, notes

Full disclosure.Philadelphia
has been my home since 1972.
I love it, and I would not dream
of living anywhere else (in this
country). I walk its streets, I
read its newspaper, and I give
my students assignments
that engage them with local
issues, problems, and people.
The majority of my clients are
regional. Philadelphias designs
are the designs I know. I hope
that any criticism of Philadel
phian design in this book will
be taken constructively, in the
spirit in which it is meant, and
with the understanding that it
is to some extent the result of
geographic happenstance.

I have never had any direct
client-designer relationship
with any of the originators of
the designs that I may appear
to criticize in the book, nor
are any of those designs by
designers with whom I com
peted for work.

Every effort has been made to
accurately credit the designers,
artists, and authors whose