Sunday, February 4, 2007

Hand me that towel, please.

 Before I begin, I have to say I was a little disappointed with some of the information provided by the book.  It was completely misleading, and I am thoroughly embarrassed for putting my faith in a certain pictorial instruction.  I'm talking about the instructions on page 54 - the "Two Amusing Water Tricks."  I tried 50 to 60 times to pull a glass up while twisting, leaving the water standing (which apparently works about 80% of the time), but ended up getting soaked each time.  Now my hardwood countertop is stained, and my pride soaked with deceit.  Fortunately, the "cutting the water and making a loop" trick worked on my first try.  In fact, it flowed for a solid five minutes on the table by itself.  One for one ain't bad, my friends.

On a more serious note, I found the book to be fascinating.  I was especially intrigued by the term "Disinformation Design."  As quoted in the book, "To create illusions is to engage in disinformation design, to corrupt optical information, to deceive the audience.  Thus the strategies of magic suggest what not to do if our goal is truth-telling rather than illusion-making."  This is fascinating, indeed.  If disinformation is the equivalent of deception, than information is the equivalent of being as accurate and truthful as possible.  This leads me to believe that the most important aspect of information design is to be as clear, concise, and complete in getting the truth across.  It is more important to add the necessary details, notes, and additives that help the "audience" understand more fully than it is to clutter that space with neat looking designs or unneeded, extraneous information.  I believe that when, and only when a message is at its most precise state (as intended by the designer or person giving the information), can the actual design or "look" of the chart or map take priority.

"Work before play," my dad used to say.

I also found chapter two to be equally interesting.  That stupid Broad Street pump.  I'll stick to bottled water, thank you. 

1 comment:

Subi said...

i like the way your brain works ryan. so true of what u said...