Graphic design and trust

Will Stahl-Timmins gave a great talk to the IIID last week (International Institute for Information Design). He is the data graphics designer for the BMJ, a leading medical journal.  

Almost as an aside he mentioned the issue of trust: well-finished graphics in a medical context can sometimes be mistaken for marketing by pharma companies. 

Integrity can be a problem for infographics, and I've mentioned it before: infographics which round the numbers up or down too much, or which haven't been proof-read against the data, give graphic design a bad name.

Over-simplification is the main objection the plain language movement face. You don't often hear it mentioned in the context of graphic design - perhaps that's because no one actually takes us seriously enough.

Icons as rhetoric

What's the rhetorical function of this sign in Hong Kong? It's not a warning, but an instruction. 

And these deer in a recent New Yorker cartoon also reckon their sign is an instruction.

 

Men in hats, take note

I think this sign, seen in Munich, means "If you've had too much to drink, you'd better take the metro home".