Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design | 
 enlarge | Author: Paul Mijksenaar
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 314078
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 56
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 6.7 x 0.3
ISBN: 156898118X
Dewey Decimal Number: 745
EAN: 9781568981185
ASIN: 156898118X
Publication Date: December 1, 1997
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Product Description
Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design presents and discusses a variety of graphics used in transmitting information, analyzing signs, graphs, and charts through a method similar to that found in Edward Tufte's books (Envisioning Information and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information), which have had an enormous influence on today's graphic designers. With copious color and black-and-white illustrations, this book examines airplane safety cards, street maps, road signs, instruction booklets, corporate logos, subway guides, magazine advertisements, cookbooks, computer diagrams, and car manuals, all as a means of explaining how information can be conveyed without words.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Thoughtful examples but missing narrative cohesion June 28, 2008
These excellent design examples lack just one thing: a book to contain them. This binding is not an introduction to information design but rather an unordered series of ID comparisons randomly proffered with no narrative thread and scant context, comment, or analysis. It reads like the answer key to a lab problem set.
The examples, and especially typography, are scaled down to fit an excruciatingly undersized page. Had the price of paper spiked when the publisher chose this layout? It's hard to imagine that a publisher of a book on ID would knowingly opt for such visual compression and density--a design template, it would seem, intended for crib notes or disclosure of drug side effects. Seriously. Not only is text size in the captions significantly smaller than the body (6-8 point), but it's also a shade of about 35% black, and, oddly, over-leaded. Very hard on middle-aged eyes.
Nonetheless, this slim volume wastes no time getting to thought-provoking successes and failures in graphical ID. Perhaps the best involve subway maps drawn for NYC. In explaining the failure of one particular map design, Mijksenaar notes, "When reality is radically schematized, the link with that same reality is quickly lost" (p. 6). This volume could supplement other, more comprehensive ID treatments; it should not be the only one you own.
 Where's the Beef? November 10, 2006
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This appears to be a teaser for something else, maybe joining his faculty at the Delft University of Technology. The topic is interesting but few conclusions are drawn, many examples are given, but it's not clear what they are examples of. Techniques are alluded to but not describes. Disappointing, but otherwise a pretty little pamphlet.
 Definitely, not a book. September 3, 1999
5 out of 11 found this review helpful
Mijksenaar provides some interesting ideas but not much depth. Very disappointing.
It's not really a book ... September 30, 1998
13 out of 17 found this review helpful
... it's more of a pamphlet. Mijksenaar provides some nice examples and interesting ideas, but I wanted much more. Once can read this "book" in less than an hour.
 A manifesto and a paradox, sort of. January 5, 1998
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
This small, profusely illustrated book is, well, a personal manifesto against bad informational design. Mijksenaar does not take prisoners: his case studies (of bad design) include glitches by some of the most prominent dutch designers. Healthy, very healthy. There are some surprises, especially if your infodesign paradigm is the London underground map. The book is also a paradox, though, in that it is itself badly designed. By that I don't mean the shape, color, printing, which are pretty, but its logical content structure, which is confusing. Because it is more of a (needed) rant against bad info design, I call it a manifesto. It is an optimistic manifesto, and Visual Function is well worth reading, if only because US designers would profit from getting to know their their dutch counterparts better.
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