Marian Bantjes

This is a great piece from the Designing Minds show on Adobe TV, that comes from the Design Matters Live event hosted by AIGA/San Francisco. It's a great discussion of Marian's process, and work.

Sir Ken Robinson

It's ten till eleven at night. I just finished watching Sir Ken Robinson's commencement address at my alma mater, RISD. I'm incredibly inspired. I hope you take the time to listen to the entire talk, it takes about a half an hour.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid24998704001?bclid=24957603001&bctid=24930210001

This is brilliant graffiti that points out the bizarre graphic translation.

The Power of Charts

This is an example of how a well-designed information graphic can communicate instantly, and impactfully a concept that is quite complex. The graphic shows the number of jobs lost, over time, in the current recession, as compared with the previous two recessions. One could easily believe, by listening to the media, that this current recession is typical partisan disagreement, and will "work itself out". The reality is, that we've lost more jobs, at a faster pace, than in recent history. What really frightened me, when I saw the graph, was that the current job loss line has not begun to more toward the right. It's going off the proverbial cliff!

Information Design

This Winter, at Cal State L.A., I'm teaching a class on Information Design. I've had an interest in this material since I was an undergraduat, and took a class with Krystof Lenk. Krystof was a proponent of sound information design principles. He went on to later found the firm Dynamic Diagrams (website). I remember having to design an directory for our new design center, that showed where different departments and activities where, in the new center. This was particularly challenging, in that the center was made up of four buildings of differing heights, and levels of floors, with a single elevator core. I remember loving this project, even though I wasn't entirely satisfied with my final design solution.

That was around 1987. In 1990, while in graduate school, I had the opportunity to take an Information Design course with Edward Tufte, for a semester. During that course, he was printing his latest book, Envisioning Information. Every week, he'd bring us each an entire signature, fresh off the press! It was a fascinating, and at times trying course.

Fast forward to 2009. I'm now in my sixth year teaching design. This is the first opportunity that I've had to present an entire ten-week course on the topic of Information Design. I'm enjoying gathering, and discussing data graphics with my students. I hope that they are as well. As with all the courses that I've had the opportunity to teach, I learn how to present the material, by doing. Each time I teach a course that I've taught before, I find that I make adjustments. Not only to keep it fresh and interesting, but to improve on the learning outcomes achieved by students. I'm sure that this course will be the same. Hopefully, we'll all learn something during this ten-week journey, that will enrich and inform our practices, as we move forward.

There's a fresh set of "sketch-blogs" to the right of this page. These blogs come from the students in this course. Enjoy.