Two pictures of the ground

No information design in this post - just a couple of photos of the ground. After burying a new sewer pipe, the contractors have carefully restored the double-yellow no parking lines in our car park, in spite of the fact the rest of the line is completely worn away. After building this new ramp, someone walked through the wet cement leaving big boot marks. I love they way they have been carefully filled using cement of a different colour. Now there’s no missing them.

Cranks and idiots

Since I am on a religious theme, these two books found themselves juxtaposed on my bookshelf. One is now in the kitchen where it belongs.

Making reading digestible

Still on a scriptural theme... the Reader's Digest Bible cuts out the ‘boring bits’ – the genealogies or details of the Old Testament law – in an effort to make it less of a weariness of the flesh. But quite often when you look at other translations, the boring bits are actually graphically signalled, helping people read strategically (ie, helping them skip those parts).

In this page from Numbers, I've highlighted the section of the Reader's Digest Bible that is the equivalent of a spread from an edition of the New International Version (I designed the one shown some years ago for Hodder & Stoughton). 

The sections shaded pink are the ones left out of the RD version – I hope the image is clear enough to see that the list of tribes is spaced and indented in a way that makes it easy for the reader to simply skip over, noting the authenticity of the historical record (the main function of that passage for the modern reader). The spacing was not introduced by me but by the scholars and theologians responsible for the translation.

On another occasion I tried to take an even more explicit information design approach to Bible design. The Contemporary English Version is translated to be easier for people without a religious background to understand – it avoids theological terms, for example. I tried to make it look less bibly and to use genre cues to help readers approach it in a more strategic way. I could not avoid double columns (for space reasons) but I was able to use single column for poetry, so the line endings would be clearer. I used a three column ‘fine print’ approach for the boring bits, and bold headings.

Thought for the day

Paul Luna twitters on a scriptural theme:

“God as usability guru? ‘We have never sent a messenger who did not use his own people’s language to make things clear for them’ Qur’an 14:4”

I counter with Ecclesiastes 12:12: ‘Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.’

Oddly worded no smoking sign

My compulsion to whip out my iPhone in toilets continues - this one from a National Express train.

I suppose it is entirely reasonable that if I watch someone smoking in the loo, they can complain to the train guard.

I'll have to stop these toilet posts - Paul Luna's talking about the Oxford Literary Festival in his blog this week, and I'm lowering the tone.

Another toilet sign

I like the thoroughness of this sign. When you warn me about hot water, I want to know where it's likely to come at me from.



Location: Royal Station Hotel, Newcastle

Doing what it says on the tin

We all like things that do what they say on the tin. I also like things that say on the tin what they do. Like these shop signs: no guesswork required (unless you're too young to know what a gramophone is).

Locations: the wool shop is in Liskeard, and the radio shop is in Jedburgh.

Information design anthem: new contender

Radio Berkshire was in our department yesterday, interviewing staff and students. I was called back later in the day to comment on the Local Government Association's call to ban the use of jargon by local councils. Actually, their list was a little weak - 'coterminous' is translated as 'singing from the same hymn sheet'. That's not what it is, and even if it was, it's not so far from the kind of stuff they're trying to ban.

I played the programme back on iPlayer today, and realised that I hadn't spotted the music Radio Berkshire put on just before the spot on jargon: the Animals, 'Don't let me be misunderstood'.

Google street view melts car

Google has launched street view in the UK. I love the side effects of their car-mounted cameras - this car looks like it's programmed Australia into its satnav.

Musical forms

Following an earlier post about information design in rock, John Willmer tells me he reckons the only musical arrangement of a government form is Frank Zappa's wonderful 'Welcome to the United States' from the album The Yellow Shark. Do you know otherwise?

I suppose you could argue that Rowan Atkinson's schoolmaster is a performance of a bureaucratic process, but while perfectly timed it's not musical.

Dear Lord Customer

I bought a shirt from the Boden catalogue at the weekend, and was flattered to be offered the choice of not just Mr or Ms in front of my name, but any number of aristocratic or military titles, including Field Marshall Lord. A couple of minutes with Google suggests to me that there may only be one of these extant, and only a handful at most... and that there is one person with Field Marshal the Rt Hon Lord in front of his name. Unfortunately he is unable to look forward to a delivery of underpants with his full title on the label.

He is also unable to shop with full dignity at Fortnum & Mason (the green one below) or Harrods (the yellow one). Sure enough, they are expecting the posh set, but I fear they are only scratching the surface. I remember a car insurance website years ago that included 'Chief', 'Mother Superior' and 'His Holiness' (I may have made up that last one, but only just).


I've been trying to work out the organising principle of the Harrods list - is it alphabetical, or based on protocol? I think it may be 'cast in order of appearance' which explains why the Wing Commander has somehow got between the Lord and his Lady.

school shcool

The Times recently spotted spelling mistakes in the blog published by Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, and their website features a set of 'top twenty spelling mistakes on signs around the world'. Some are the usual homophone traps ('boarder', instead of 'border') from organisations who should know better, but most are just typos or spelling mistakes on hand written notices. The criticism seems a little picky, but I did like this one. I suspect it might be one of those phonetic spelling errors I've mentioned before. I think this one was written by that Dutch guy from the Grolsch ads. Or perhaps it is a nifty slogan from Jim Knight's department, trying to show that school can be cool.

Very good language blog

We've had snow in the UK this week (it's become relatively unusual), and the linguist Geoffrey Pullum was on the radio this morning explaining why it is not true that eskimos have 25 words for snow. He has been fighting this urban myth for many years now, and his essay 'The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax' is a good read, as is all his stuff.

Googling him to find the link to it, I discovered the brilliant blog Language Log. He has a range of co-contributors including Geoff Nunberg, another entertaining and insightful writer on language. Meeting GN at a conference a few years back I confused him with GP, and told how much I'd enjoyed his eskimo stuff. He wasn't amused and I was given to understand I had committed lèse-majesté - evidently it happens all the time. But looking at some of his writings today I realise that Nunberg is indeed the alpha Geoff. Here's a sample which includes a nice new distinction I plan to quote a lot, between 'typos' and 'thinkos'.

Confessions of a distracted geek

I am very proud of myself - I just found the Arial vs Helvetica quiz and scored 9 out of 10. Or should I be ashamed because I got one wrong? There's no feedback so I don't which one.

The Helvetica film is a wonderful celebration of typography. I enjoyed it hugely until I realised that it was never going to end, and that they were never going to stop the examples and the interviews. So I left early and never found out who dunnit. That's me and typographic geekery all over - I used to be a true typographic geek but got distracted.

The power of words

The power of words was in the news this week, with Carol Thatcher's suspension from the BBC for using offensive racial language... well, the word Golliwog. Comments left on news websites were split between those who get it that the word is offensive, and those who don't. Words are offensive if they cause offense, and I'm most convinced (and moved) by the comments from people who were taunted with the name as children - such as the Independent's Ava Vidal.

Browsing in a second-hand bookshop this weekend I chanced upon what appears to be a revisionist version of a well known 1940s children's book by Robert Tredinnick.

More nice graffiti

Cara Gerard sent me this.

and a link to more Geeky Graffiti.

I curse thee, Trainline

I like The Trainline, a booking site for rail tickets. But every time I use them I get fooled by the 'Continue' button on the last screen. It takes you to a 'partner website' - ie, an advertiser who wants to sign you up to something.

I don't use The Trainline often enough to remember that this is a con... and it gets me every time.

I hope they're making a little money out of it as compensation for the loss of customer trust. This kind of functional impersonation is pretty close to phishing.

Patronising logo

Adult functional literacy is a big issue, and there is a very long tradition of trying not to patronise adults by giving them children's reading primers. The 'On the move' BBC series was a pioneer of this as long ago as the 1970s.

You can find adult literacy tests to practice online, but just look at where you find them:

Gourmet stroop test

Rummaging through my student son's larder I discovered the bottle on the right. If you're not from the UK you won't know that the Tesco Value range consists of absurdly cheap but basically OK basics - things like bread, beans and biscuits. Not Balsamic Vinegar Of Modena. That comes in posh bottles like the one on the left.

Now I have heard that the Value range is largely bought by the middle classes - the genuinely needy target market being too proud to be seen to be buying the cheapest. May or may not be true, but perhaps it explains the incursion of this resoundingly middle class vinegar.

Non ironic version

To be fair, here's a new version of the email I just posted, that arrived about an hour after the other one.

You can read about the new journal here: PJIM.

New journal on data visualisation

Just received this email about a new journal on information mapping and data visualisation. Ironic, eh?

Actually it looks like a very interesting journal and I plan to follow this up. But it's just as well Parsons is focusing on visual stuff, not verbal - how's this for a noun phrase: 'a one-of-a-kind Research, Development, and Professional Services facility leveraging Knowledge Visualization'.

This should appeal to our vicious, semi-criminal customers

Most organisations segment their customers in some way, so they can target products or communications at each group. They give names to the segments like 'empty nesters', 'cash-strapped families', 'young trendsetters' and so on. Some of these verge on the pejorative - like the one I've just seen that prompted this post, that I won't quote because I'm working with the organisation concerned at the moment. Sometimes there are informal usages within organisations - at one mobile phone company I worked with, anonymous pay-as-you-go customers who did not register their accounts were known as 'crims' or 'dealers'.








Oddly enough, I'd start writing this post when I thought I'd see what Paul Luna had put up on his Luna's café blog recently - he showed this legend from one of Charles Booth's London maps - part of his Life and labour of the people of London survey(1886–1903).

Photo of tree

Nothing to do with the topic of this blog, I know, but around the corner from the last photo was this Christmas tree. It appears to have been put out for the bin men, but left behind when the rubbish was collected because it blends in so well with the other trees in the street.

The King Canute signage awards, 2009: entry 2

In case it's not obvious, on the left someone has written 'Pls don't urinate here'. On the right someone else has helpfully drawn a urinal on the wall (Eagle Court, Farringdon).

The King Canute signage awards, 2009: entry 1

Obviously these no smoking signs will prevent the smoke from passers-by reaching the folk sat in the chairs at this open air coffee stand in Broad Street, Reading.

Great new book for forms lovers

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Borries Schwesinger, author of what looks like a landmark book on forms design, Formulare Gestalten. I say 'looks like' because I don't read German, but the scope of the book is visible from the extensive examples, both historical and modern, and by its comprehensive assemblies of graphic styles. It is beautifully produced, and is already attracting awards. Borries is currently working on an English language version, and I'm looking forward to it.

Chance encounter

One of the joys of computer search is when it throws up strange stuff that seems much more interesting than the topic you are concerned with. Best one today is 'Sword swallowing and its side effects', an article in the British Medical Journal. I particularly like its reference to a sympton known as a 'sword throat'. Recovering from flu, I reckon that's what I have right now.

I'm a little puzzled about how this article appeared in my search for research on the effectiveness of financial advice. Perhaps sword swallowing and financial advice are both forms of trickery and illusion.

The latest high tech

There's a great collection of scanned Radio Shack catalogues here. Thanks to Collin McDougall for the link. I enjoyed flicking through them, and found myself wanting to order the latest tape recorder. We've come a long way since 1961, but it was just as exciting in those days, with hifi and tape recording still quite recently introduced. 

One hundred years of progress

I've found a box of prehistoric documents, including a talk I gave to the ISTC in 1976. It was a little depressing reading it again, to find how little my ideas have progressed in 30 years. But it was nice to find these examples of information design from railway manuals from 1855 and 1972 (from Michael Macdonald-Ross's collection). One of them is very usable – pocket sized, with simple language, and accessible summaries in the margin. Progress?

Here's a scan of the talk, in case anyone's interested.

Happy Christmas

Thanks to Paul Matson for sending me this (from Stansted Airport). Happy Christmas everyone.

Disappointing

Graphic designers have a noble role to play in news communication through diagramming and graphic explanation. But they seem to have turned instead to the naff branding of news stories. Channel 4's graphic treatment of the Mumbai terrorism was breathtakingly crass, with its fake hindi curry house logo.

Agreeable?

I've asked a number of conference audiences if anyone has ever read the small print you get shown when you install software. One person has put their hand up, out of several hundred people. I don't particularly mind saying I agree with something I haven't read, but I don't feel comfortable saying I have read it, and even less comfortable saying I have 'read and understood' it. After all, I thought I'd read and understood my chemistry O level textbook, but look what happened.

I propose an alternative: 

You can't be too careful

Sign seen at a building site next to Farringdon tube station. I think they've got most things covered, except perhaps 'may contain nuts'.

Quite big

A while ago I posted a note about the Michelin guides' francocentric use of the Eiffel Tower as a unit of comparative height. Now I've found a copy of their New York guide to illustrate the point. The usual point of these pictures is to impress you with the size of the new object, as compared with the known one. In this case we think 'wow, I didn't realise the Eiffel Tower was so big'. I think this is something approaching bad manners in a guide book - rather like dining with friends, and complimenting them that the meal was slightly better that the one you cooked yourself that day for lunch.

A life explained

Thanks to Paul Luna for showing me this homage to infographics. It's by the French agency H5 (I loved their other stuff too - have a look at 'wuz', which has a great ending).



Since I first posted this, the link has been removed from Youtube, but you can see it on the H5 website - go to Film/Clip/Royksopp.

And I've just been told (thanks, Brian) you can download it on iTunes (seach for 'Remind me').

Another fading sign

Passing this sign, with the red worn away through years of shouting danger, I saw someone lighting a cigarette. Now that people can only smoke outside public buildings, I suppose they might expect there to be permissive signs to mirror the prohibitive ones on the door.



Turning the corner, though, this newer sign makes it very clear why lighting up wasn't such a good idea, and certainly to be avoided while naked.

Slippery jazz hands man

I love the jazz hands on this stick man.

For years I was an embarrassment on family holidays by constantly stopping to take photos of whatever it was we were designing at the time: airport signs or payphone user instructions were favourites. So it was nice to get this photo sent to my phone by my son Alex, overcome by a sad genetic urge to snap a sign for the first time. It's only a matter of time before he inherits my baldness too.

News graphics

I recently made the acquaintance of Max Gadney - he's responsible for news graphics at the BBC (or at least I think he may have moved on from that role as, googling him, I find his very information-rich job title is Channel Editor, BBC Two & BBC Four, Vision Multi-Platform team). As a sideline he creates terrific information graphics for World War II magazine, like this one.


Have a look at his website.

Max also told me about the Society for News Design.

The book - tech support

This wonderful YouTube clip from a Norwegian comedy show was doing the rounds a year ago or so, but in case you missed it...

Not fade away

My photo flatters the legibility of this slowly fading message outside Barts Hospital in London.

A worry for the literal minded

This sign I found in a Starbucks loo is a little worrying for the literal-minded... not to say anally retentive.

Stop, stop, please stop

Martin Evans has sent me this link to a nice video: what happens when marketers brief an agency to design the stop sign.

Craphology

Paul Luna found this old book on graphology in a second-hand bookshop. The cover is interestingly and appropriately worn – appropriately, because at first glance I took it to say... well, read the first four letters for yourself. Graphology, if you recall, is the 'science' of analysing handwriting, which some organisations apparently take seriously when considering job applications. This particular book claims to tell you how to judge someone's confidence, altruism, degree of introversion, and many other things, but it makes little mention of 'was writing this on a train', 'was using a rubbish biro', 'is obviously French' or 'was trained as a graphic designer'.

You will only remember 10% of this, apparently

Every now and again you see a claim that we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we see, 30% of what we do... I forgot how it goes, and so I should since it is entirely spurious. In one place, I found it reported with much more plausible precision: 9%, 17.5%, 31%, etc. But it was still rubbish, it turns out. Some years ago I saw this stated authoritatively on a BBC web page, even attributing it to 'recent research', so I wrote to ask for the citation. They replied that they had got it from the British Dyslexia Association, so I wrote to them. They in turn replied that they had read it somewhere, but they hadn't got a source. 

Hunting for the source, I posted a query on the Infodesign Cafe, which put me in touch with Michael Molenda of Indiana University, who was on a similar hunt. He eventually published a short paper with his findings (you can find it here). He traced it to Edgar Dale's 'cone of experience', published in the late 40s. Dale used a schematic diagram (below) to illustrate his view that increasing richness of experience would lead to greater learning. 

 

Somewhere along the way, someone has added the figures, and these have been repeated endlessly ever since, deeply embedded in the teacher training curriculum. Tony Betrus and Al Januszewski of the State University of New York have published a collection of bad cones. 

It seems unlikely that a 'quotation' like this would have survived for so long unless there is some truth in it - in other words, it chimes with people's experience in some way, just as a saying such as 'a picture is worth a thousand words' does. Perhaps this is just a modern version of a proverb – it's just that these days we need statistics. 

The Education department at Cisco Systems have looked into the evidence that actually does exist, and produced a useful metareview .

Diagrams and irony

There are various websites around that collect data graphic interpretations of pop songs - they're good for a chuckle until you tire of them. One that's been doing the rounds is this nice graphic from Evita (credited to brianmn). 

 

To be literal minded for a moment, I could point out that the song doesn't actually suggest that anyone should 'cry for me' – because, after all, 'I never left you'. Or perhaps it is ironic and suggests that Argentina should actually be crying.

But of course, diagrams don't do irony very well. This next one (credited to sftekbear) shows another limitation of its chosen format. There are in fact fifty ways to leave your lover, only a few of which are specified in the song, and they are not given comparative frequencies as implied by this chart. 

However, a professor writes: 

In fact, although Simon (1975) is often quoted as identifying ‘50 ways to leave your lover’, we must treat this figure with caution. Reviewing the primary source, we find that Simon speculates that there ‘must be’ 50 ways, but does not present supporting data, nor does he claim 50 as an exact number. Only four ways are detailed:

Just slip out the back

Make a new plan

Just drop off the key

Hop on the bus.

Simon makes 2 additional proposals concerning the manner of departure

You don’t need to be coy

You don’t need to discuss much.

A major theoretical problem arises from the lack of a clear categorial distinction between the 4 ways. An alternative view is that these are simply 4 stages of a process model: that is, in combination they describe only one way to leave your lover: 

1. Make a new plan; 

2. Drop off the key; 

3. Slip out the back; 

4. Hop on the bus. 

However, this view is easily countered by further reference to the original data: Way 1 (slip out the back) specifically applies to a named individual (viz. Jack), whereas Way 2 (make a new plan) is specific to people named Stan. Since the principle underlying the allocation of method to individuals appears to be rhyming, we may reasonably speculate that Way 1 would also be appropriate for persons named Mac, or Zak, while Way 2 is also appropriate for persons named Dan. 

On this basis we may proceed to a more accurate calculation of the different ways to leave your lover – that is, it must correlate with the number of available names within the population, with allowances made for duplication resulting from homophonic terminal phonemes. We may, then, posit a direct relationship between available forenames within a particular language, culture, or discourse community and available options for terminating amatory relationships. 

This leads to the conclusion that the number of available amor-terminatory strategies is directly proportional to the number of available personal nomenclature allocation options. 

Some cultures (eg, the UK) permit an infinite range of options, with no rules for spelling (viz, Agnes, Agyness), while others (such as Portugal) require parents to choose from a prescribed list. In Sweden, there is no prescribed list, but parents can be prevented from choosing unusual names. It is therefore tempting to hypothesise that divorce rates in regulated countries should be lower than unregulated countries, since there will be correspondingly fewer ways to leave your lover. 

This is indeed confirmed by the statistics: UK – 2.7 divorces per 1000 population; Sweden – 2.4; Portugal – 1.9. Of course, this figure should only be properly calculated using data adjusted for the frequency of matching terminal phonemes (which reduce the lover-leaving options within some language groups). And further we may speculate that in unregulated societies, parents may opt for names that, having no suitable rhymes effectively insulate their progeny from the risks of divorce: this may have been the motive of the Swedish parents naming their children Lego, Metallica or Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (see Daily Telegraph, 7June 2008). We may conclude that further research is necessary. etc, etc.