Information Design - Spring 2009 - Actual Size

Designer Profile Assignment

Scenario

Phaidon, an international publisher of art and design books, plans to publish, in conjunction with the Design Museum of London, a new biographical dictionary of important figures in the history of design. They have the completed manuscript (MS) and now need a sensible and effective design for its content. In particular, they want the style of each entry to reflect the style of its subject, the designer. At the same time, they want certain supra-textual and spatial features to run consistently throughout the book, to prevent too chaotic a composition.

The Phaidon editors commission several established information design teams known for their skill and imagination with just this sort of project (i.e., yourselves) to create a set of sample designs. Each member of each team will produce a sample chapter devoted to a single designer.

Each team will brainstorm collectively, to review the design conventions for the biographical reference article and reference book genres and to imagine different design strategies.

Then each team member will select a figure from the list and produce a distinct design for that entry.

The text (but not the images) for the entries is available at the Design Museum website.

Note: Preferably elect one of the older designers (the one's without the interview).

Here are some Recommended designers:

While the textual content has been finalized for this project, the visual content remains contingent on the chosen design. Therefore, each design will need to supply its own images.

The deadline for the final designs is Wedensdayday, April 15.

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Process

Working as a group: Analyze the rhetorical situation of the project: Who is going to be the book's audience? How will the audience use (access) the information in the book? What are some things they might do with the information? What are some things the information will enable them to do? What is/are the context(s) in which the book will be used?

Research the design and generic conventions of reference books. Explore design possibilities by examining instances of other genres. What features might you adapt to the task at hand? This will involve visiting the the Reference Sections of an RU library or a bookstore as well as actively keeping an eye out for design features in the documents your encounter daily (e.g., in magazines or on-line).

An early decision: will you use a book? column? modular? grid as the basis for your design? Look at the examples in Samara.

Locate illustrations and other graphic (extra-textual) elements you might use. Continue to use only pixel-rich images. Remember that many online images, like those found on the Design Museum website, will be of inferior quality, given their low resolution. You might do better to scan images whenever you can.

Divide up the design work between the team members. Then produce a first, "test" draft of the designs for next week's class.

Review and the test the design with other members of your team and then revise.

For this project, you make construct preliminary designs in any program you like. However: the document must be developed using InDesign. Produce the basic template using the Master page(s). Also use styles (Digital Foundations, chap. 14) to speed things up.

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Requirements

You will need to fit the information in 4-8 pages (on 2-4 sheets of 8˝ x 11 paper). But remember that conciseness is a design value in document design.

You'll need to set the text carefully. Do NOT simply copy and paste. Read through the text, adjusting for optimal readability, As before, use Hedrick as general guide.

You may break up (or combine) existing paragraph divisions (as needed). In general: you may rearrange (but NOT eliminate) portions of the text for the sake of effective and aesthetically interesting design.

As part of a book, your document design will need to have basic (expected) supra-textual features: margins, page numbers, page headings, etc. Do not start on page 1. Start your entry with a page number that makes sense. If you're starting with a two-page spread (one possibility), then make sure that your first page number is even.

The Phaidon editors want two or three pull-quotes from the text, so work these into your design.

You will need to find and add visual material. Do NOT use the images accompanying the base text.

You will need to add headings and/or use other devices to label and sub-divide the text.

Remember that your design will be a sample or paradigm for all the entries in the book. Thus, you should make whatever supra-textual (book-wide) design decisions you think appropriate (page headers, footers, numbering, etc.).

For instance, the Van Neumann text has five numbered notes: should these appear as footnotes? endnotes? sidenotes? inter-paragraph notes? inter-section notes? Make a reasoned decision.

You may work in black, white, and gray but color is recommended for the more colorful designers.

Follow the Gestalt and CRAP principles of design.

Keep stylesheet notes as you work and attach a printed copy of your (final) stylesheet to your Design Script.

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Special Requirements

Each profile needs to visually and textually indicate the nationality (or birthplace, country of primary association) of the designer. The more interesting the device, the better.

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Design Script

The editors request that each team member provide a design script detailing the decision-making process behind the design. As with the previous design script, you should draw on multiple readings to support and clarify your decisions. Drawing on Tufte and at least three other readings, quote informatively and supportively at least twice from EACH reading.

One section of your DS should compare your page layout with one or more of the examples of layout in SAMARA. Refer to the example(s) in Samara by the name of the document and page number(s).

The design script should include the STYLESHEET for your project.

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