Information Design Quotes

What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be "boiled down" and "simplified"? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading. Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information. ~ Edward R. Tufte

A metaphor for good information design is a map. Hold any diagram against a map and see how it compares. ~ Edward Tufte

Information design has been around since the 1970s. Pioneers like Yale University design guru Edward Tufte and design agency Pentagram have long known and used its power. But now with the rise of the Internet, it's having something of a second birth. ~ David McCandless

Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space. ~ Edward R. Tufte

Nurse Leatheran has been giving me valuable information about the various members of the expedition. Incidentally I have learnt a good deal - about the victim. And the victim, mademoiselle, is very often the clue to the mystery. ~ Agatha Christie

Genes aren't designed to make us happy. They design us to make
more copies of themselves. ~ Joe Quirk

The Internet is, among other things, a massive, chaotic marketplace. Too much information, it turns out, is a lot like no information. ~ Adam Davidson

A guy gave me a job at an information booth - no questions asked. ~ Jay London

I've never had a problem with a dumb client. There is no such thing as a bad client. Part of our job is to do good work and get the client to accept it. ~ Bob Gill

From this perspective, the universe can be thought of as an information processor. It takes information regarding how things are now and produces information delineating how things will be at the next now, and the now after that. Our senses become aware of such processing by detecting how the physical environment changes over time. But the physical environment itself is emergent; it arises from the fundamental ingredient, information, and evolves according to the fundamental rules, the laws of physics. ~ Brian Greene

The purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action. ~ Peter Drucker

We no longer live addicted to speech; having lost our senses, now we are going to lose language, too. We will be addicted to data, naturally. Not data that comes from the world, or from language, but encoded data. To know is to inform oneself. Information is becoming our primary and universal addiction. ~ Michel Serres

[T]he problem was too much information. The population was being inundated with conflicting versions of increasingly complex events. People were giving up on understanding anything. The glut of information was dulling awareness, not aiding it. Overload. It encouraged passivity, not involvement. ~ Jerry Mander

Life's cares are comforts; such by Heav'n design'd; He that hath none must make them, or be wretched. ~ Edward Young

I want to continue to strengthen Harvard's fabulous collections in old printed material, but at the same time, I want to help Harvard move into the world of digitized information. ~ Robert Darnton

In general I saw my job as the first president whose full term would be served after the Cold War in a global information society where we were interdependent but not integrated. And therefore, we were vulnerable to the worst, and able to seize the best, of what's going on in the world. ~ William J. Clinton

Human-centered design. Meeting people where they are and really taking their needs and feedback into account. When you let people participate in the design process, you find that they often have ingenious ideas about what would really help them. And it's not a onetime thing; it's an iterative process. ~ Melinda Gates

That's something I learned in art school. I studied graphic design in Germany, and my professor emphasized the responsibility that designers and illustrators have towards the people they create things for. ~ Eric Carle

JOHN: You said "Good day." I think that it is a nice day today.
CAROL: Is it?
JOHN: Yes, I think it is.
CAROL: And why is that important?
JOHN: Because it is the essence of all human communication. I say something
conventional, you respond, and the information we exchange is not about the
"weather," but that we both agree to converse. In effect, we agree that we are both
human. ~ David Mamet

Outside theology and fantastic literature, few can doubt that the main features of our universe are its dearth of meaning and lack of discernible purpose. And yet, with bewildering optimism, we continue to assemble whatever scraps of information we can gather in scrolls and books and computer chips, on shelf after library shelf, whether material, virtual or otherwise, pathetically intent on lending the world a semblance of sense and order, while knowing perfectly well that, however much we'd like to believe the contrary, our pursuits are sadly doomed to failure. ~ Alberto Manguel

It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an 'information highway', but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies. ~ Mike Royko

If one discloses everything in speech he 'designs' in his mind, he will attain Moksha [liberation] sooner. The mind is so restless that it will create whatever design it wants and ruin countless [future] lives. ~ Dada Bhagwan

There is danger that someday the farm land will be gone, the Downtown will be deserted, and the middle class living outside the city boundaries. If it is done intentionally, then that is our choice, but if it is allowed simply to happen without purpose, then that is ignorance. Indianapolis contains fantastic elements to become a vital city, but frequently our heritage has been destroyed in favor of cheap development and easy profits. Architects are not perfect, and many chances to improve our city have been lost. They allow the client to build structures without concern for what that building will do to the surrounding environment. The matter of conscience falls prey to the matter of making a living. A desire to improve our quality of life on the part of the client and profession will provide the best solution for all. Readers of this book, be inquisitive, explore your city, question its growth, let your feelings be known if your city is faulty, speak out if it is praiseworthy. Talk to your architects, politicians and developers; they are professionals, but they are also your servants. Use them to make your city better. Enjoy Indianapolis. It is a city to be lived in and can be taken to heart if one tries. ~ Rick A. Ball

Profound changes to how children access vast information is yielding new forms of peer-to-peer and individual-guided learning. ~ Sugata Mitra

I had artists that refused to work on Chappie if they were working on a design that actually said Denel on the side of the thing. But anyway, it's the blurring of fiction and reality that was appealing and I certainly did not want them to be in the movie and not be themselves. ~ Neill Blomkamp

A problem of future research is to clarify how young children learn what type of social comparative information is most useful for efficacy evaluation ~ Albert Bandura

People relate to people, and if your brand feels like people, they'll relate to you, too. ~ Laura Busche

Nonfiction is at its best an act of putting the world back together - or tearing some piece of it apart to find what's hidden beneath the assumptions or conventions - and in this sense creation and destruction can be akin. The process can be incandescent with excitement, whether from finding some unexpected scrap of information or from recognizing the patterns that begin to arise as the fragments begin to assemble. Something you didn't know well comes into focus, and the world makes sense in a new way, or an old assumption is gutted, and then you try to write it down. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Responsible Development shares many practices with XP but the roots are different. Responsible Development's values are honesty, transparency, accountability and responsibility. These lead me to pairing, test-first, incremental design, continuous integration and so on because they support the values. ~ Kent Beck

Perhaps that is what death is , Bessie thought
as she awoke, a senseless reprisal of our lives, a void we drift in and out of, unable to control it, we are doomed to it; the senseless end of a long tale, the senseless repetition of a long life endlessly retold with forgotten information. ~ Vera Jane Cook

Agriculture as we know it needs to disappear. We can design better and healthier proteins than we get from nature. ~ Craig Venter

And just when we were at the end of our design process there was the news that the Italian government and the U.S. government had signed an agreement to fly the first Italian astronaut on that flight. ~ Umberto Guidoni

When God calls us to confession, it's not just about sharing details for the purpose of information transference. To better understand what God has called us to, it is important to know the difference between transparency and vulnerability. Transparency is sharing the intimate details of your life with another. Vulnerability is going beyond transparency to invite others into the details of your life and asking them to help you. ~ Aaron Stern

The genius idea of industrialism was the concept of the Model T: In exchange for something cheap and well-made, we'd forgo unique, lovely design. ~ Clive Thompson

Experts depend on the fact that you don't have the information they do. Or that you are so befuddled by the complexity of their operation that you wouldn't know what to do with the information if you had it. Or that you are so in awe of their expertise that you wouldn't dare challenge them. If ~ Steven D. Levitt

If you're selling information - and I have a lot of friends who write a lot of bestselling books and they're selling information. They don't need to have a picture on the cover at all because they are not important. They're secondary to their information. To me, the information is secondary to me. ~ Larry Winget

In ideal form of social control is an atomised collection of individuals focused on their own narrow concern, lacking the kinds of organisations in which they can gain information, develop and articulate their thoughts, and act constructively to achieve common ends. ~ Noam Chomsky

People who are in a position of finding out that they're at risk for some illness, whether it's breast cancer, or heart disease, are afraid to get that information - even though it might be useful to them - because of fears that they'll lose their health insurance or their job. ~ Francis Collins

After months of preparation working with a stylist who explained to me how a fashion house runs and the process of making a dress, I developed a respect for the patience and skill it takes to design these dresses. ~ Pierre Niney

I am a fashion designer. I'm not an environmentalist. When I get up in the morning, number one I'm a mother and a wife, and number two I design clothes. So the main thing I need to do is create, hopefully, exquisitely beautiful, desirable objects for my customer. ~ Stella McCartney

You are aware only of a small amount of the total information your eyes take in, and even less is processed by your conscious mind and remembered. ~ David McRaney