David McCandless Quotes

Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose.

Some of the commercial work I do is helping people to improve their presentations and add some design thinking. There are so many amazing things in science, and such great data, which can often be locked away. It's in the minds of these amazing practitioners, who can't necessarily express what they want in a visual way.

Information is expanding daily. How to get it out visually is important.

As a visual person, I love a creative resume. Putting in a little effort on the design side will show that you care about making things look good.

Beautiful Evidence is about the theory and practice of analytical design.

I feel that every day, all of us now are being blasted by information design. It's being poured into our eyes through the Web, and we're all visualizers now; we're all demanding a visual aspect to our information. There's something almost quite magical about visual information. It's effortless; it literally pours in.

Information design has been around since the 1970s. Pioneers like Yale University design guru Edward Tufte and design agency Pentagram have long known and used its power. But now with the rise of the Internet, it's having something of a second birth.

Except in expert hands, stats can get in the way of story; an array of data that might better be presented in a table instead clogs up sentences.

I'm happy to provide that service. But that's the power of it. A good infographic that's been really worked on looks simple and easy, but it actually required a lot of processing.

Practice design, Not Decoration: Don't just make pretty talking points. Instead, display information in a way that makes complex information clear.

When you say 'design,' everybody thinks of magazine pages. So it's an emotive word. Everybody thinks it's how something looks, whereas for me, design is pretty much everything.

Design, in its broadest sense, is the enabler of the digital era - it's a process that creates order out of chaos, that renders technology usable to business. Design means being good, not just looking good.

It's incredible, but I think a lot of people it shot over their heads 'cause they're used to just getting images and messing around with them, and for us to do something quite so 'designed' was a bit of a shock.

To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit: it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. To design is to transform prose into poetry.

So much of it is the design of the shot or the motion of the character; it's the work you do so that it has the same things that are in the movie. In just a few frames it's got to communicate something clearly and dramatically.

I look at graphic design as communication, meaning that the work has to have a vibe to connect to the viewer or perceiver. I make a black and white drawing and then add color digitally, bringing in a contemporary pattern to the composition to create a vibrance.

I didn't think that personal style had much value in graphic design.

It's a visual world and people respond to visuals.

Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.

Design is nothing if not decision making.

Put simply, if an interface is poorly designed, I will not see the data I looked for, even if it is right there on the page.

A journalist and an information architect face exactly the same problem - how to give shape to the pile of information in front of you in a way that will make it easy and natural for people to comprehend. I can't imagine any better preparation for the work I do now.

Of course, I did lots of what would be called graphic design now, what used to be called commercial art.

I don't start with a design objective, I start with a communication objective. I feel my project is successful if it communicates what it is supposed to communicate.

A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.