InfoD: Bookwatch (43)

         * InfoDesign Bookwatch *   (43)


           In this message:
           1. Trees, maps, and theorems (Jean-luc Doumont)
           2. Designing universal knowledge (Gerlinde Schuller)
           3. Visual Thinking for Design (Colin Ware)
           4. Information Design Workbook (Kim Baer)


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1)     TITLE: Trees, maps, and theorems
               Effective communication for rational minds

       AUTHOR: Jean-luc Doumont

      DETAILS: Price: USD 96.00 | 80.00 euro
               ISBN: 978 90 813677 07
               Published: 2009 / 169 pages
               Publisher: Principiae, Kraainem

      WEBSITE: http://www.principiae.be/TM&Th/X0000.php

DESCRIPTION:
Trees, maps, and theorems offers overall guidelines and
practical tips toward getting messages across in written
documents, oral presentations, and graphical displays.
It proposes a no-nonsense, down-to-earth, readily usable
advice underpinned by a simple yet solid conceptual basis
and presented in a highly modular visual structure.


CONTENTS:
Part one, Fundamentals, introduces the main ideas
that underpin the four subsequent parts. By offering
a minimal set of universal principles, it equips readers
for most challenges of professional communication.

Part two, Effective written documents, discusses
a methodology in five steps to proceed from scratch
to a complete document, by planning, designing,
drafting, formatting, and revising the document.

Part three, Effective oral presentations, proposes
a similar yet distinct method in five steps: planning
the presentation, designing it, creating the slides,
delivering the presentation, and answering questions.

Part four, Effective graphical displays, first classifies
pictures as a way to select the right representation,
then discusses how to plan, design, and construct
optimal graphs, and finally how to draft a caption.

Part five, Applications, shows how the guidelines
in the previous parts apply to five common types
of documents, namely sets of instructions, e-mail,
Web sites, meeting reports, and scientific posters.

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2)      TITLE: Designing universal knowledge
               The world as flatland - Report 1

       AUTHOR: Gerlinde Schuller

      DETAILS: Price: 34.90 euro
               ISBN: 978 3 03778 149 4
               Published: 2009 / 304 pages
               Publisher: Lars M=FCller publishers, Baden

      WEBSITE: http://www.theworldasflatland.net/report1.htm

DESCRIPTION:
The author examines collections of knowledge such as
archives, encyclopedias, data collections, and libraries
that make knowledge accessible worldwide.
Who is collecting the world's knowledge? How is it structured
and designed? Who determines the access of knowledge?
Designers and researchers from different fields have set
standards for the classification and design of complex data
collections and thus exerted an enormous influence on how
knowledge is communicated. This facilitates knowledge transfer,
but it also increases the danger of manipulation. Along with
these aspects, the book also explores the possibilities of
'universal design' and presents new approaches to visualizing
complex information.


CONTENTS: alphabetical

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3)      TITLE: Visual Thinking for Design

       AUTHOR: Colin Ware

      DETAILS: Price: USD 39.95 | 36,95 euro
               ISBN: 978 0 12 370896 0
               Published: 2008 / 256 pages
               Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies

      WEBSITE: http://www.elsevierdirect.com/product.jsp?isbn=3D97801237089=
60

       Review: http://eagereyes.org/reviews/VisualThinking.html

DESCRIPTION:
Increasingly, designers need to present information in
ways that aid their audience's thinking process. Fortunately, results
from the relatively new science of human visual perception provide
valuable guidance.

In Visual Thinking for Design, Colin Ware takes what we now know
about perception, cognition, and attention and transforms it into
concrete advice that designers can directly apply. He demonstrates
how designs can be considered as tools for cognition - extensions
of the viewer=B9s brain in much the same way that a hammer is an
extension of the user=B9s hand.

CONTENTS:
- Visual queries
- What we can easily see
- Structuring two dimensional space
- Color
- Getting the information: visual space and time
- Visual objects, words, and meaning
- Visual and verbal narrative
- Creative meta seeing
- The dance of meaning

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4)     TITLE: Information Design Workbook
               Graphic approaches, solutions, and inspiration +
               30 case studies

       AUTHOR: Kim Bear (with contributing writer Jill Vacarra)

      DETAILS: Price: USD 40,00 | 27,50 GBP
               ISBN: 978 1 59253 410 4
               Published: 2008 / 240 pages
               Publisher: Rockport publishers, Beverley (MA).

      WEBSITE: http://www.rockpub.com/description.asp?isbn=3D1592534104

DESCRIPTION:
This new volume takes a methodical yet comprehensive approach to
conveying the fundamentals of avant-garde, innovative, information
design by examining history, theory, criticism, technology and media,
process, method, and practice.

Opening with a very brief history followed by an instructive breakdown
of the discipline, readers will get an understanding of the complexities
of crafting information design to effectively =

improve communication both functionally and =

aesthetically.

The back half of the book contains a wide range of case studies from
design firms around the world so designers can see the techniques
previously outlined in the first half of the book. The author
critiques and explains why the design is successful in terms of formal
quality (Aesthetics) and function (How does it improve communication?).

CONTENTS:
Preface
1. About information design
2. Process: discovery
3. Process: prototypes and testing
4. Design toolkit
5. Printed matter case studies
6. Information graphics case studies
7. Interactive case studies
8. Environmental case studies
9. Experimental case studies
Contributors - About the author - Acknowledgements - Resources.

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InfoDesign Bookwatch is compiled Karel van der Waarde. Suggestions
for titles are welcome, and may be sent to: [email protected]

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