[/caption]Recently, while working on an information mapping project, I came across the London based designer David McCandless and his fantastic data visualisation. McCandless runs the website Information is Beautiful and regularly contributes information design to The Guardian along with publishing books on the subject.
McCandless approaches information design in a practical, easy to understand way. He has the unique ability of taking the most complicated concept or intangible idea and turning it into an easy to understand visual representation. Unlike some information design which is more difficult to decipher then a clue in a Dan Brown novel, his work is easy to understand, clean and minimal. And herein lies the beauty of it: McCandless' work allows the reader to instantly understand a complex topic or issue at a glance, often without even having to refer to a legend. In his own words, information design is a way of "squeezing an enormous amount of data into a small space".
Interestingly, McCandless' background is not is design, but in journalism. He never studied design or art of any kind and has only been working as a designer since 2008. Maybe this background is partly the reason for the effectiveness of his work. McCandless does not 'over-design' the visualisations, or try to make them complicated or overly 'pretty'. Instead, his work is invisible, allowing the information, rather then the design, to be the focus of the work. After all, it is he himself who says 'information is beautiful'.
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