I found today’s reading to be informative and useful. This is the first class I have ever taken in the field of graphic design. Much of this is new to me, but I find it fascinating. I know bad design when I see it, but how to correct it is not always obvious. A chart with a lot of information that is not properly layered and separated is useless. If it takes someone longer than a split second to interpret the chart and find what there looking for, they give up, they shut-down. It is crucial to elicit cognition in that first glance.
In this reading, there were several charts that were shown with poor design, given a critical evaluation, and then redesigned to be more effective. The changes made to them were usually subtle, and always simple, but the differences before and after were very apparent. It is refreshing to me that problems in communication can be solved with such modesty and ease.
Albers’ principle of 1 + 1 = 3 was a new way of thinking about things I already knew. I was always aware of negative space, but it is definitely easy to ignore. I had never before given a concrete value, a number, to the interaction of two elements on a page. Something about having the equation that appears at first as a contradiction gave me clarity and solidified knowledge I already had.
I enjoyed the video we watched in class with David McCandless. I like people with success stories that do not include a lot of schooling. I do not believe there is anything taught in a classroom that cannot be acquired by the inquisitive mind. He is right in saying that we all have an intuitive knowledge of design by virtue of the fact that we are surrounded by it.
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