On Friday I attended a seminar dedicated to information design, taught by Edward Tufte. I’ve read a lot of his stuff, but hearing him made a big difference. It was mind opening and exciting. It made me realize the bad habits I’ve accumulated as I’m working, out of insecurity. Tufte is a proponent of the “smallest effective difference”, which is the subtlest possible version that is still clear and effective. So, if you have a line connecting two pieces of information, make it only as visible as it needs to be to make its point.
As I’m working, my first draft of things is relatively content oriented and fairly simple. Then, as I am about to send it off to the person who requested it, I get nervous. They pay me to be a graphic designer. Does it look like I’ve “designed” this? Have I made enough marks on it? Then I get out my drop shadows and my rounded corners and my gradients and I throw a few of them around. I breathe a sigh of relief. Now it looks “designed”.
But now I’m thinking that’s silly. That is not about the information, that’s about me. My need to prove I’ve handled the object, made my mark on it. So now when I reach for that Layer Style, I need to stop and ask “Is this for me, or for the information?” To every thing there is a season. A time to drop shadow, a time to refrain from drop shadowing. No longer will I rely on this gimmick to justify my position. But sometimes its just looks freakin’ sweet.