Customer Reviews

Information Design

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I can't think of a single positive thing to say about this book. The quality level is vanity press publication, rather than a work of academic scholarship; there is no evidence that an editor, or anyone speaking English as their first language for that matter, took an editing pass through this book prior to publication. For example, in the "lexicon" on p. 62:

"Vanishing: the act of causing to disappear or the state of disappearing of textual information previously vaporized (See Vaporization.)

"Vaporization: the act of vaporizing or the state of being vaporized of textual information destined to disappear after a change of communicative pressure has occurred. (See Vanishing.)"

The book consists of (1) a dense 62-page monologue, heavily citing her own work (the bibliography cites 20 authors; 31 of the 52 works cited are to her own publications), illustrated with black and white line drawings that do little if anything to illuminate the text, (2) 8 pages of photos of buildings, and (3) 102 pages of random, unconnected, and unsequenced jottings that appear to have been lecture slides.

Tonfoni takes the obvious and wraps it in obtuse intellectual jargon, producing a volume that is a waste of money to purchase, and a waste of time to read. If you want useful information on information design, read Tufte or find an out-of-print copy of Wurman's Information Architects. Or the recent O'Reilly book on Information Architecture. Or spend an hour or two on your own, thinking about specific problems, or examining information resources that you like and analyzing why.