Manifesto & Terms

Of the 12 participants in the sessions, only one had formally studied information design. The others came from political science and international development, business informatics, analytics and business intelligence, fine art and visual communication, systemic design, graphic design, and UX design and media informatics.

Information design isn't something you study, since dedicated programs are only now emerging. It is something you construct from diverse fields of knowledge. This diversity isn't a weakness. It is the field's strength.

Information design makes complexity understandable and manageable. At its core it is translation, which means understanding your audience and making information comprehensible to them. But it goes beyond translation, because information designers often shape the content itself. By gaining deep knowledge of a subject, they become cocreators of knowledge and not just visualizers of data.

The impact of good information design is that people truly understand. Without it, communication faces its largest problem, the illusion that communication has taken place. The quality of information design can be measured by how many “aha!” moments it creates, those instances when someone moves from confusion to clarity.

Information design isn't just about making content look appealing. The work involves a deeper engagement with content that is usually more complex and less flexible than in traditional graphic design. Information designers structure information, make editorial decisions and often deliver greater value for internal processes than purely aesthetic design work.

Data analysis focuses on extracting insights from data. Information design presents and interprets them visually, so that audiences can draw their own conclusions and decide for themselves what to do next. Compared to graphic designers, information designers have the patience to analyze complex content. Compared to analysts, they know which design approaches work for different audiences.

Information visualization works as a political tool. It enables people and institutions to debate, make decisions and ultimately act on reality. This power comes with responsibility, because visualization can be used to illuminate or to manipulate.

The shared approach can be summed up as turning question marks into exclamation marks. Information design distills the essential from the complex and presents it in ways that are understandable, compelling, appealing and memorable. The goal is not only that the message is received, but that it stays with the audience.

Curiosity is the foundational skill of information design, and nearly every participant emphasized it. Curiosity here is a perspective, a way of looking at information with a passion for learning, questioning and challenging oneself. It enables the continuous learning that every new project demands.

Beyond curiosity, information designers need analytical skills such as structural and critical thinking, reading both text and numbers, and understanding data, statistics and bias. They need creative skills such as design understanding across graphics, systems, typography and interaction, the ability to simplify and abstract, and spatial imagination. And they need communication skills such as storytelling, empathy with audiences, active listening and the ability to turn abstract concepts into tangible visual forms.

What distinguishes information designers is that they hold seemingly opposite qualities in balance. They are highly structured and still design with intuition and feeling. They make content decisions while designing instead of treating design as a separate step at the end. This combination can't be reduced to either “designer” or “analyst.”

The most consistent motivation is creating clarity. It is the “aha!” moment when patterns emerge from messy data and audiences move from confusion to understanding. Each project also serves the designer's own learning. Turning data into visuals is like observational drawing, where the process itself deepens understanding.

Information designers are also driven by the belief that their work creates positive change. It helps people understand complex connections, make better decisions and become better informed citizens. Good information design combines the pursuit of beauty with the pursuit of knowledge and treats them as intertwined values rather than separate goals.

Good information design creates mental models that people return to when they think about a topic. When these visualizations are based on facts, they spread accurate knowledge over time. Good information design also becomes a tool that people actively use. Audiences point to the graphics, reference them and use them to explain their own perspectives. At its best it creates a “so what” effect, where understanding turns into action that gets shared and acted upon.

Measuring this impact honestly is hard. Attribution is difficult when a design is one influence among many. Information designers may need to look beyond the metrics of human computer interaction and borrow frameworks from the social sciences, because impact measurement itself has to be designed. Often the real evidence is anecdotal, such as a satisfied client, compliments from the audience or a before and after comparison that shows change. These signals are not scientifically rigorous, but they still represent real value.