Customer Reviews

Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design

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This small, profusely illustrated book is, well, a personal manifesto against bad informational design. Mijksenaar does not take prisoners: his case studies (of bad design) include glitches by some of the most prominent dutch designers. Healthy, very healthy. There are some surprises, especially if your infodesign paradigm is the London underground map. The book is also a paradox, though, in that it is itself badly designed. By that I don't mean the shape, color, printing, which are pretty, but its logical content structure, which is confusing. Because it is more of a (needed) rant against bad info design, I call it a manifesto. It is an optimistic manifesto, and Visual Function is well worth reading, if only because US designers would profit from getting to know their their dutch counterparts better.

... it's more of a pamphlet. Mijksenaar provides some nice examples and interesting ideas, but I wanted much more. Once can read this "book" in less than an hour.

These excellent design examples lack just one thing: a book to contain them. This binding is not an introduction to information design but rather an unordered series of ID comparisons randomly proffered with no narrative thread and scant context, comment, or analysis. It reads like the answer key to a lab problem set.

The examples, and especially typography, are scaled down to fit an excruciatingly undersized page. Had the price of paper spiked when the publisher chose this layout? It's hard to imagine that a publisher of a book on ID would knowingly opt for such visual compression and density--a design template, it would seem, intended for crib notes or disclosure of drug side effects. Seriously. The body text is set in an over-leaded 10pt sans serif and the captions about 8pt sans serif light. The text in illustrations elludes legibility entirely. Very hard on middle-aged eyes.

Nonetheless, this slim volume wastes no time getting to thought-provoking successes and failures in graphical ID. Perhaps the best involve subway maps drawn for NYC. In explaining the failure of one particular map design, Mijksenaar notes, "When reality is radically schematized, the link with that same reality is quickly lost" (p. 6). This volume could supplement other, more comprehensive ID treatments; it should not be the only one you own.

This appears to be a teaser for something else, maybe joining his faculty at the Delft University of Technology. The topic is interesting but few conclusions are drawn, many examples are given, but it's not clear what they are examples of. Techniques are alluded to but not describes. Disappointing, but otherwise a pretty little pamphlet.

Mijksenaar provides some interesting ideas but not much depth. Very disappointing.