Size matters

Garcia-Media and Mario Garcia, one of the best-known and best newspaper designers on the planet, recently released an interesting white paper about the international move from the broadsheet to the tabloid size and smaller (http://garcia-media.com/files/GM_whitepaper.pdf).

Garcia points out that in 1999 he predicted an 8.5x11 (or a European A4 size) by 2020. Now he says it will happen much sooner. I agree, but I also predict that as the marriage of the home computer and the television gets closer (and, hey, how about digital paper?), we will see that A4 size, but in landscape or horizontal format. It is much closer to the orientation of monitors. That way media outlets can create information packages for any of the above without having to radically change formats. People will become habituated to the horizontal display of all media, but especially news media.

While I am in the predicting mood, I also think that when we get a digital newspaper, it will become even smaller and perform the function that TV Guide does for television. The newspaper will tease -- and connect -- to fuller coverage on your plasma, high-def, wall-mounted computervision (computer-television) in an on-demand mode. The newspaper will be a reference to help you find what you want easily, not a first-line medium, as it is now.

If it happens, I won't be happy, but at least I won't have to clean up inky fingerprints from my kitchen table, doors, walls, clothes, etc. Electrons leave little behind. . . .

Graphic designers are not the Devil

A quick clarification in my thinking/writing. There is, obviously, good work done by graphic designers. I have seen some wonderful glyphs, logos, logotypes, illustrations and so on. But, and again I am generalizing here, graphic designers' successes seem to come when solving the communication problem involves the purely visual. Add words to the mix and many if not most graphic designers flail about.

That's why I like the term information design, and I have used it for years. We information designers work with both words and visuals; graphic designers seem to get lost when words are in the mix. Naturally the best way to communicate, to transfer meaning, is when words and visuals are integrated.

So if you are in the market for a visual communicator, get an information designer, not a graphic designer.

Info vs. Graphic Design, Part II

I suppose the main point here is that I believe good media design is functional. Actually, though I use the term, I believe that "functional design" is an oxymoron. Design must have some kind of function whether it is newspaper design, package design, product design or architecture or it is not design. It is art. Ignoring the function of what you are designing is simply bad design, regardless of how good it may look.

This is where graphic designers seem to make a wrong turn. The emphasis -- probably gathered during an education focusing on learning how to overuse certain software just because you can -- on looking good first and the heck with whether the design succeeds in its functional task is simply upside down, a "through the looking glass" approach.

That's why I prefer information design for those of us trying to deliver meaning to meaning consumers; graphic design for me has become a pejorative term. Next I will turn to my ideas about design morphogenesis.

Design: Information vs. Graphic

I have a bit of a problem with graphic designers in media fields. Seems to me they are more interested in how things look than in how they work, i.e., in whether their design supports the transfer of information -- the purpose of media communication. If the mediaworker's meaning isn't quickly and easily moved to the reader/viewer, then no matter how pretty something is, it is unacceptable.

And don't even bring up such things as accuracy and proper spelling, grammar and punctuation. Graphic designers look at words and see a typeface and kerning, not meaning transfer tools.

This is my problem with a lot of advertising design contests. Awards sometimes go to "pretty ads" that didn't work for the company. Heck, if an ad didn't move people to action, then it simply wasn't a good ad.

I have been all for information design for a long time, an approach that puts the transfer of meaning first. More from me later, but check out http://www.informationdesign.org. Cheers.