How you transmit knowledge, share concepts and process information through language, and how structure and legibility affect the visualisation of messages informs the design decisions you make on a daily basis.
To help your audience understand your messaging, you need to know how they will receive and decode the information you send.
Scientific study has provided designers with a number of theoretical tools to refine and improve their messages. Among these, some of the more practical tools are chunking, perception, scanpaths, wayfinding and content structure;
Chunking information (Millar’s magic number seven)
In cognitive psychology, chunking refers to a strategy for making short-term memory more effective.
‘The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two’ a highly cited 1954 paper from Harvard psychologist George Miller argued that the number of objects (or ‘chunks’) of information the average person can hold in short-term memory is 7 +/-2.
Capacity for short-term memory varies between individuals (and subject expertise), but generally people can process 7 +/-2 individual pieces of information at any one time. This principle can be extended to chunk more complex information. Dividing complex information into subsets that also number 7 +/-2 makes it easier to process, understand and recall.
A practical example of Millar’s Law is the conversion of telephone numbers to smaller, more memorable 4-digit chunks ie. 02079460357 converted to (020) 7946 0357.
Therefore, well considered page or interface design needs to account for the reader’s ability to process multiple information sets in short-term memory. By using layout, colour, typeface, typesize and placement you can ensure that complex information is always arranged into groups numbering 7+/-2 and is thus easier for your audience to process and to understand.
Don’t believe me? Then why do you always make a shopping list for more than five items?
Tuesday 30 November 2010
Thursday 25 November 2010
In anticipation of London 2012
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| London 2012 stadium |
Seeing the Olympic Stadium and Zaha Hadid designed Aquatics Centre rising from the dilapidated light industrial units and bomb sites that littered the lower Lea Valley have given me a great sense anticipation for the 2012 Games.
From the train on Friday morning I watched the zig-zag tubular superstructure of the Stadium rising above the yellow mist, and I was struck by how dramatic the repeat triangles of the main frame were in their simplicity.
The contrast with Herzog & de Meuron’s Bird’s Nest Stadium in Bejing could not be more striking, but I feel the design for the London stadium is curiously appropriate. The Bejing Games announced to the world that China was a modern, complex and sophisticated nation. London’s games have been dubbed the austerity games and the main stadium structure, made from recycled gas pipes, reflects these straitened times and yet has a quiet dignity about it.
Neverthless, sripped to its essentials, the exoskeleton follows the modernist maxim ‘form follows function’ and echoes some of Britain’s most iconic architecture.
And maybe it’s appropriate that the stadium should sit back a little and allow the athletes to take centre stage.
2012 – Can’t wait.
Monday 15 November 2010
Narrative structure
All stories operate on two levels, the action level and the narrative level.
The action level describes what happens, while the narrative level describes how it happens.
The narrative provides the structure to a story, the framework that allows the action to take place.
The structure of storytelling was set out by Aristotle, who stated that a drama should have a beginning, a middle and an end. It should be constructed according to a unity of time, place and action, with the various characters and plot elements intertwined to create a unified story.
In schools, children are taught about a five stage ‘story hill’ with an introduction or set up, a rising crisis, a turning point, the climax and the ending.
A similar structure can be seen in films, where in order to keep the audience’s attention, the screenplay uses a time based grid to change the pace and focus of a film.
Typically there is a first act that sets up the main characters, before an incident happens that disrupts their world and launches the second act. Partway through the second act something major happens to change the tone and nature of the film. This mid-point climax re-energises the narrative. At the end of the second act, a significant event signals the drawing in of all the plot strands and the third act brings the climax of the film.
Of course, it’s more complex than this. Each act is made up of scenes, each of which needs their own structure to help drive the narrative forward.
Traditional stories relied on a dramatic triangle involving a victim, a persecutor and a rescuer in a tight and closed narrative. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. How the story ends may not be clear at the start, but the drama is always resolved.
More contemporary stories allow for a non-dramatic journey where the audience is encouraged to make its own mind up as to the meaning of the story and the ending may be ambiguous.
In the interactive world, immersive role playing games allow the viewer to become active participants in the story. Role playing games have evolved stoytelling from a liner narrative with a single ending, to a tree structure with multiple endings, and now a web-like structure where there is no first or last page and everything relates to everything else. The illusion of freedom is complete, even if it takes place within the limitations of the imagined world.
How then to make narrative sense of this?
To paraphrase screenwriter Robert McKee, the secret of a successful narrative is to use these principles, not to write the story, but to understand why these structures resonate with the audience and to understand how to use them at the macro and micro level to tell your story.
The action level describes what happens, while the narrative level describes how it happens.
The narrative provides the structure to a story, the framework that allows the action to take place.
The structure of storytelling was set out by Aristotle, who stated that a drama should have a beginning, a middle and an end. It should be constructed according to a unity of time, place and action, with the various characters and plot elements intertwined to create a unified story.
In schools, children are taught about a five stage ‘story hill’ with an introduction or set up, a rising crisis, a turning point, the climax and the ending.
A similar structure can be seen in films, where in order to keep the audience’s attention, the screenplay uses a time based grid to change the pace and focus of a film.
Typically there is a first act that sets up the main characters, before an incident happens that disrupts their world and launches the second act. Partway through the second act something major happens to change the tone and nature of the film. This mid-point climax re-energises the narrative. At the end of the second act, a significant event signals the drawing in of all the plot strands and the third act brings the climax of the film.
Of course, it’s more complex than this. Each act is made up of scenes, each of which needs their own structure to help drive the narrative forward.
Traditional stories relied on a dramatic triangle involving a victim, a persecutor and a rescuer in a tight and closed narrative. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. How the story ends may not be clear at the start, but the drama is always resolved.
More contemporary stories allow for a non-dramatic journey where the audience is encouraged to make its own mind up as to the meaning of the story and the ending may be ambiguous.
In the interactive world, immersive role playing games allow the viewer to become active participants in the story. Role playing games have evolved stoytelling from a liner narrative with a single ending, to a tree structure with multiple endings, and now a web-like structure where there is no first or last page and everything relates to everything else. The illusion of freedom is complete, even if it takes place within the limitations of the imagined world.
How then to make narrative sense of this?
To paraphrase screenwriter Robert McKee, the secret of a successful narrative is to use these principles, not to write the story, but to understand why these structures resonate with the audience and to understand how to use them at the macro and micro level to tell your story.
Wednesday 10 November 2010
FAC numbers
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| Image: Jan Chlebik |
Factory Records employed a unique cataloguing system that gave a number not just to its musical releases, but to artwork and other objects (including a lawsuit).
The last ever Factory catalogue number was given to Tony Wilson's coffin (FAC 501).
I like the way that a simple identifier took on a whole life of it's own and became as much a part of the Factory brand language as the imagery and type.
For type enthusiasts, the font is Rotis and was laser-etched.
Tuesday 9 November 2010
The message is now the medium
At MediaPro 2010 the main theme of the keynote speakers was how to engage with social media.
“The medium is the message”, Marshal McLuhan, 1964
McLuhan argued that the entire communication industry is underpinned by a symbiotic relationship in which the delivery medium influences how the message is perceived.
2010 - The message is now the medium.
The rise of the social web – characterised by dynamic public content that changes as a result of a many-way conversation between applications, consumer/citizens and service providers - is redefining the communications landscape.
The principles on which successful social software is built are the basics of human psychology – conversations, groups, transactions, reputation and ownership.
Get those right, your engagement becomes authentic and your messaging more effective.
“The medium is the message”, Marshal McLuhan, 1964
McLuhan argued that the entire communication industry is underpinned by a symbiotic relationship in which the delivery medium influences how the message is perceived.
2010 - The message is now the medium.
The rise of the social web – characterised by dynamic public content that changes as a result of a many-way conversation between applications, consumer/citizens and service providers - is redefining the communications landscape.
The principles on which successful social software is built are the basics of human psychology – conversations, groups, transactions, reputation and ownership.
Get those right, your engagement becomes authentic and your messaging more effective.
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