A Quote by Erik Spiekermann

These days, information is a commodity being sold. And designers-including the newly defined subset of information designers and information architects-have a responsible role to play. We are interpreters, not merely translators, between sender and receiver. What we say and how we say it makes a difference. If we want to speak to people, we need to know their language. In order to design for understanding, we need to understand design.

Erik Spiekermann

Quote Topics

Architects Being Between Commodity Days Defined Design Designers Difference How Including Information Know Language Makes Merely Need Order People Play Receiver Responsible Role Say Sold Speak These Days Translators Understand Understanding Want

Quote Author

Erik Spiekermann
German - Graphic Designer
Born: May 30, 1947

Language designers want to design the perfect language. They want to be able to say, 'My language is perfect. It can do everything.' But it's just plain impossible to design a perfect language, because there are two ways to look at a language. One way is by looking at what can be done with that language. The other is by looking at how we feel using that language-how we feel while programming.

Yukihiro Matsumoto

Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it.

Neil Postman

Data isn't information. ... Information, unlike data, is useful. While there's a gulf between data and information, there's a wide ocean between information and knowledge. What turns the gears in our brains isn't information, but ideas, inventions, and inspiration. Knowledge-not information-implies understanding. And beyond knowledge lies what we should be seeking: wisdom.

Clifford Stoll

I'm so immersed in my little world that I don't often sit back and pay attention to what's going on around me. It truly stuns me when people recognize me. Obviously, I'm not a film star, but even at a design exhibition or art exhibition, if someone comes up to me, I'm sort of taken aback. I don't think of myself like that. But if I can have an effect on young designers, that's great - particularly young designers coming from Australia. Europeans grew up with design. The rest of us lived on tidbits of information.

Marc Newson

Here's the general theory: To clarify, add detail. Imagine that. To clarify, add detail. And clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don't start throwing out information, instead fix the design.

Edward Tufte

Normally if you add information to information, you have more information. In case of my art, I destroy information, I would say, because the image is disturbed by the writings. In a way, they become pure imagery. For me it's really fun because it's an idealistic approach to images, to just play around with information and see what's happening.

Thomas Ruff

Designers have been uncreative and very arrogant. They need to listen to people. People have always wanted more exciting, interesting design, but we designers didn't see it.

Marcel Wanders

Information anxiety is the black hole between data and knowledge, and it happens when information doesn't tell us what we want or need to know.

Richard Saul Wurman

People need to know more than what a piece of information means. They also need to know how the information matters.

John Seely Brown

I like to question the minutia, to get to the essence of things. The minutia of life is all about design. It's about the design of how you talk to another human being; it's the design of speech; it's the design of everything we do. We need to be better at listening, and we need to aim more directly at understanding and being understood.

Richard Saul Wurman

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

Nancy Duarte

The most important feature of an information economy, in which information is defined as surprise, is the overthrow, not the attainment, of equilibrium. The science that we have come to know as information theory establishes the supremacy of the entrepreneur because it appreciates the powerful connection between destruction and what Schumpeter described as "creative destruction," between chaos and creativity.

George Gilder

There's so much information on the internet. But people don't need more information, they need 'aha moments,' they need awareness, they need things that actually shift and change them.

Jack Canfield

I'm not a believer in putting designers off in an ivory tower. They need to have a voice at the table so they can identify where and why design can make a difference. We also need to understand the business issues. If we don't make our numbers this quarter, we don't earn the right to do something cool the next time.

Chuck Jones

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.