Contact:cdent@burningchrome.com
Horn, R.E. (1999). Information design: Emergence of a new profession.
In R. Jacobson (Ed.), _Information design_ (p. 15-33). Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
A historical perspective of the emerging profession of information
design including a discussion of the various professions in which
information design is performed, the tensions between those
professions and between the profession at large and the uninitiated.
Predicts a future wherein there is an increased measure of
professional behavior, including greater training and greater
appreciation of research underpinning the field. It is important to
note that in this context information design is strongly associated
with what is frequently called graphic design; that is, the
organization of information in a graphical fashion to more effectively
convey information.
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In the context of information architecture or information management I
want to aggressively dispute the following truism of the status quo:
In any field of human endeavor there is a process of, first,
specialization and, then, increasing professionalization.
I don't dispute that it is true. I dispute that it is a good thing. A
significant promise of information tools has been the placement of choice
and power into the hands of individuals. Professionalism is nice word
for segregation. While it is true that professional societies and
professional certifications exist to delineate standards of quality
and safety then also exist to delineate the lines between those people
who can know and those people who cannot; those people who are the
priests and those who are the laity.
We don't need more of that in this world.
Information designers, as cast by Horn, are those people who provide
an interpretive conduit for information. They take the complex and
give it form which they believe simple enough to be digested by some
audience categorized as the uninformed.
It is true that a well intended information designer can give concrete
form to the abstract, allowing people to see something they could not
see before. We have all experience that moment of recognition when
seeing something in a light we were unable to cast ourselves. Instead
of encouraging the massification of the ability to shine new light in
a group of professions, people with skills should be sharing them,
losing the information of how they do it onto everyone so they can do
it themselves.
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