Book Review: Information Design Workbook

Infographic artists or graphic designers who create designs to communicate ideas to people should like this book.

The summary on the preface accurately describes this book and I'll quote it here.

This book:
- Leads you through the mindset and kind of thinking that support good information design.
- Gives you an overview of the type of processes and tools you can use to create effective information design.
- Shows real-world examples of successful products
- Presents interviews with some of the premier practitioners working in the field today.

This book talks about high level concepts to give an overview to information design. The first four chapters explains the need for effective design and provides lots of examples where they are used, and how helpful they are. Some examples include direct mail, litigation graphics, etc. Interviewees relates on what works and what doesn't through their own experience.

There are several tools include to help designers. They include personas and scenario simulation, research and testing and even mundane stuff like using plain language. Of course not all might relate to everyone. I'm a newspaper artist and I don't do testing for every graphic that I produce. But they do give results for tests conducted, which can be applied to different fields.

One chapter is devoted to design principles with examples from all medium.

The last five chapters are the case studies. Each touches on a different medium and each comes with 6 real life success stories. That's 30 set of experience from the industry you can learn from.

I'll like to conclude that this book practices what it preaches. The information on the pages is laid out nicely and easy to absorb.

Here's the table of contents:
Preface - Approaching information design from a user-centric point of view
1. About information design. What is it? Who is doing it? Why is it important?
2. Process: Discovery. A step-by-step look at the research and discovery process
3. Process: Prototypes and Testing. How user research and testing help to ensure successful design
4. Design Toolkit: Visual devices to help communicate information
5. Printed Matter Case Studies. Magazines, packaging and corporate communications
6. Information Graphics Case Studies. Maps, charts, and diagrams
7. Interactive Case Studies. Websites and other screen-based projects
8. Enviromental Case Studies. Wayfinding and exhibits
9. Experimental Case Studies. Information design that pushes the envelope.

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