Week 6 - Approaches to Design

Rod McLaren
Underground train drawing: Kentish Town to Camden Town

Part of a series of drawings, the following drawings, when combined create a fuller and more descriptive set of information diagrams.

The intent of these diagrams is to interpret an underground train ride that spans from Kentish Town to Camden Town and return. For example, the direction of the train is depicted through the course of the line on paper and the way in which positioning (sitting or standing) changes for a passenger is conveyed through a looser or tighter line.

Although this is categorically, an information diagram and conveys a system, I also believe it can be seen as a form of expression, specifically due to its intuitive mark making qualities. It is this mark marking quality that plays on a more poetic reflection rather than a purely diagrammatic and statistical approach. Simply, if no additional information was provided, this could be considered as a purely expressive approach.

In terms of hierarchy, the effortless use of a single line that slips in and out of connectivity and portrays a meandering path directly plays on the idea that a hierarchy leads the eye throughout a page.
























Edward R. Tufte (Illustrations: Bonnie Scranton)
Envisioning Information

This page layout is a source of documenting and conveying information yet in a sense, also incorporates an analytical approach through the diagrammatic representation and dissection of the letterform ‘a’.

The layout is quite basic but provides a good consistency through the adoption of a formal grid for both text and image, which is slightly lacking in McLaren’s information diagram. The concept of using colour within a hierarchy to create emphasis is used, although it may not be intentional (as the black a’s seem to overpower the others). It allows the eye to follow the letter ‘a’ from top to bottom, but heavily focusing on the left of the page.

The text is relatively easy to follow, with a good length of text that doesn’t extensively lengthen reading from the beginning and end widths of the page.