Chris Wells

This year’s IPPF At a Glance makes inform­a­tion graph­ics child’s play

I recently was sent this photo show­ing the 2009 IPPF “At a glance” poster which we just designed. As you can see, it’s being used as a toy (the young gen­tle­man in ques­tion is a colleague’s son). Appar­ently, he was fas­cin­ated with it for a whole after­noon and couldn’t put it down! That got me think­ing about usab­il­ity and pro­du­cing attract­ive design.

Although I don’t delib­er­ately strive to make beau­ti­ful products which would appeal dir­ectly to chil­dren (after all, they’re not what you might think of as one of IPPF’s key audi­ences) it’s still hugely grat­i­fy­ing to think that kids might actu­ally be switched onto inform­a­tion and data nar­rat­ives by attract­ive and simple graph­ics and visu­al­iz­a­tions. The clearer a piece of com­mu­nic­a­tion mater­ial is made, the more likely it is that the mes­sage and nar­rat­ive of the piece will be absorbed and com­pre­hen­ded (and, in the case of advocacy mater­ial) acted upon.

I love to think that one day, my colleague’s son will grow with a tiny recol­lec­tion of one day hold­ing a poster that kept him enthralled for a whole afternoon.

Tech­nor­ati: graphic design, usab­il­ity