I recently stumbled upon Information is Beautiful, a lovely website that creates visual representations of data in eye-catching, pleasing, beautiful ways. Some of the designs also force you to dig a little deeper, work a little harder, to understand the information. Engaging people with data is a good thing and allows us some time to think, to ponder, to understand what the data means in our "real" life. It can be hard to do this in the usual ways that data is presented to us--in simple bar graphs or lists of statistics. Information should be engaging. David McCandless makes it beautiful too. I would argue it should also be fun. I feel like he might agree.
Libraries are often pretty generic. Some libraries have the benefit of beautiful architectural spaces, but otherwise we seem to be pretty "neutral" in every sense of the word. As far as intellectual freedom and freedom to read goes, I'm all for it. When it comes to the surroundings we find ourselves in, there could be a bit more soul. Libraries present a lot of information to their patrons, whether it is operating hours, loan periods, fine information, directional, or news about local events. Pretty often the person making those posters is a library employee with a working knowledge of MS Publisher or InDesign. While I'm not against these programs, it would be nice to see a library create an organized, thoughtful aesthetic for all their publications. (And just throwing the letterhead and little book logo on the top doesn't count.) Good design, as shown by McCandless, can not only make information pretty to look at, but engaging. It also can, in my opinion, lead to a better quality of life. I'd love to see a library hire a design team--and not a corporate, let's make this look like every other library in a three county area team-- to make the library more colorful, fun, and aesthetically pleasing.
What do you think?
Photo source: Information is Beautiful: Colours in Culture
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