Author: sheilapontis
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Applied information design: Dog walkers
I am amazed of the little signs of/for dog walkers that can be found all around UK. In Argentina even though Dog Walking Business are growing quite fast we do not have any signs like the ones I have found walking around here. It is interesting how in each activity, no matter how simple or…
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Design: before, now, and then?
Since Design was defined as an academic discipline different from Art around 1836 (Frayling, 1993:4), designers have been associated with the creation of different visual communication pieces. For a long time, designers have been introducing theirselves generically as: Graphic Designers, and clients have expected that they could solve different design problems from branding, advertising, packaging…
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A closer view to the Isotype language
Last week I went to the V&A Museum to see the Isotype International Picture Language exhibition. The exhibition is a collaboration with the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication (University of Reading) and is also part of the research project ‘Isotype revisited’. To be honest I was prepared to see the very well known Isotype…
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Understanding is everything
There are tonnes of problems caused by misunderstandings from being lost in the street, arriving to inefficient solutions, to having communication problems. Understanding seems to be the most important stage of a (design) process, but what does understanding mean? How we can be sure that something is completely understood by others? In order to find…
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A bigger picture of information design
Following up recent discussions about what information design is and how it can be defined, I decided to write a little contribution trying to tackle information design from: its definition (history, objective, boundaries?), its theory (education = foundation levels, research?) and its practice (work = clients). Of course, I know what information designers do, or…
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The rose diagram
”˜The beauty of diagrams’ at BBC Four is a series of 6 programmes that analyse key diagrams. Particularly, programme 3 explains the history of ”˜The rose diagram’. This diagram was created in 1858 for the nurse Florence Nightingale to show the poor sanitary conditions of hospitals under which the British army was exposed during the…
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Adopt a design method!
I have briefly mentioned the importance of design methods for design practice and the current lack of design methodologists in a previous post. Now, I will go further explaining why design methods are essential for the design discipline more than ever. Gregory (1966), Jones (1992), Conley (2004) and Cross (2001, 2007), among others, have pointed…
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Types and approaches of (Design) research
Now the term practice-led has become a common term for me, but not before I started my PhD research I realised that there were different types of art and design research. Up to that time, I thought that all investigations had to be ”˜practice’ as their aim was to develop ”˜something’. I had in mind…
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1st CIDAG
Last week I was in Lisbon, Portugal, attending the 1st International Conference on Design and Graphic Printing (CIDAG). In addition to graphic printing other areas of design, such as corporate design and information design were discussed. I have been invited to do the opening keynote lecture for the information design area after Joan Costa, who…
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broken graphics?
Many times the diagrammatic representation about the Napoleon’s invasion of Russia has been defined as the best graphic ever made. Tufte’s books explore, analyse and develop design principles based on this diagram. I have presented this diagrammatic representation in more than one lecture, article and post to exemplify the concept of ”˜levels of information’, ”˜viewing…
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