Clarity in Communication
This morning I discovered Communication Nation, a blog on communication, by XPLANE:
Communication is one of the most important skills anyone can have, in business and in life. As individuals and as a species, I believe we will be happier and more productive if we can improve our ability to communicate. This blog is dedicated to that effort. Join the conversation!
That got me thinking about some of the more significant influences on my own thinking about communication and information design. In roughly reverse chronological order:
- I love Edward Tufte's work. If you ever create anything in Powerpoint, you owe it to yourself (and your audience) to read The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint. I also greatly enjoyed his one day course Presenting Data and Information.
- Spending copious amounts of time on Ward Cunninghams's original WikiWikiWeb helped me understand important design principles of collaborative sites. Many of those principles of collaboration interact with the design of the information itself.
- The Web Pages That Suck book (web site) has been a lasting influence on me. Unfortunately for Erin and I, once you read this book, it becomes even harder to stomach a bad web site, and the desire to go redesign corporate web sites becomes overwhelming.
- Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing is from way back in 1999, so it may be dated now. But back then, it was a wonderful guide to information design. Even today there are many big web sites that don't feature the basic principles of information design Philip was sharing with the world eight years ago. Philip and Alex's web site.