London as Our Classroom

An Introduction to Information Design

In the beginning of my master’s program we were introduced to the concept of seeing London as our classroom. By now, at the end of the first semester I would like to reflect on that. I will use a task given to us in the Design Research and Critical Practice class for this.

This week’s lecture introduced us to the topic of data visualisation and info graphics. Our lecturer Louise Healy-Adonis brought her colleague Lucas Catalan Galan, who is the head of digital forensics at the strategic insight consultancy Flamingo. Both of them pointed out the importance of meaningful visualisation of data to support major arguments or findings.

According to Payman Taei, the founder of Visme, an easy online tool to create visual content, visualisations are extremely important in the communication of information, because people remember more of what they see than of what they read:

You remember 80% of what you see, but only 20% of what you read. (Taei, 2017 cited by Visme .com, no date)

What is the difference between data visualisation and infographics? According to Louise Healy-Adonis with data visualisation various data is displayed in a comprehensive way to draw a wholistic picture, on the other hand with an infographic few single data points are extracted and displayed in clear way to guarantee a quick understanding and underline a bold statement.

My main take-away are the following aspects to consider when developing infographics or visualising data:

• Audience: Who is targeted, and which level of expertise do they have? What time does the audience have and where will they see it? What will they do with the information?

• Message: Clear aims and objectives, including relevant aspects only to make it as understandable as possible.

• Action: What action is tried to be triggered?

• Design: Align the design to fit to the audience and make it easily understandable, support the message clearly and lead to the intended action.

The task for the lecture was to develop an own infographic depicting one or several aspects of the journey as a student so far. As introduced above, I would like to use this task to reflect on the idea of London as our classroom. The idea behind this extended definition of our learning space is encouraged by Mark Gatenby, the leading professor of our Design Management and Innovation lecture. He suggests going to design and cultural events every week. My own aspiration to study in London is besides the interesting master’s program of course also supported by the inspiring environment the city provides. In my experience the learning I take away from theoretical foundations provided in class is more intensive if I can connect them to real-live examples and my creativity gets nourished by experiencing art, design and cultural events.

But how much have I really engaged with London as a city in comparison to pure lectures in the London College of Communication in the first semester?

Infographic to London as Classroom (Hinger, 2018)

The findings are obvious: London has been used as classroom. This statement is based on a nearly equal split between days of lecture and cultural events participated in. The cultural events can be further split into arts and design activities with the highest portion, then music or theatre and a small portion of other events.

A big city offers uncountable options of activities. This is why my impression was, that I had not profited enough from the possibilities during the semester. I remember a lot of venues I would have liked to visit or events I would have liked to participate in. Due to this numerical proof and graphic that depicts the balance between university and other activities very well, now in retrospective I acknowledge that I have used the city of London quite well.

Next semester I will try to keep this balance up!

Reference List:

Visme.com (no date) How to Make Information Beautiful: A Video Series for Non-Designers. Available at: https://www.visme.co/videos/intro-make-information-beautiful-series/ (Accessed: 29 November 2018).