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Defining Information Design

Information design is a broad field, complete with an equally broad (and often confusing) vocabulary. Graphic designers may be familiar with the words data visualization and infographic. Though many use these terms interchangeably, they’re not entirely the same.

According to Google’s Material Design 2 guidelines, “Data visualization is a form of communication that portrays dense and complex information in graphical form. The resulting visuals are designed to make it easy to compare data and use it to tell a story – both of which can help users in decision making.”

Similarly, information designer Duncan Geere writes that data visualization exists at the intersection of the exploratory (data analysis) and the explanatory (information design). On this spectrum, he defines infographics as “…data visualization designed to communicate information to a general audience.”

By Geere’s logic, any data visualization can be an infographic because the distinction ultimately comes down to context and intent. Therefore, as a designer, it’s important to determine who your target audience is before making any creative decisions. Take another look at your data, then ask yourself these five W questions:

• Who is searching for this information?
• What do they already know or assume about this topic?
• When and where will they find this information?
• Why do they want to know these things in the first place?

One Problem, Two Solutions

Here’s an example that puts the above framework into practice:

Imagine that a professional aerospace engineer is researching technological developments in her field. A data visualization that contains diagrams labeled with technical terms and detailed footnotes would benefit someone with her skills and experience.

Now imagine that a group of middle schoolers is building a model rocket in their Intro to Engineering class. An infographic containing cute illustrations, simple language, and more general information would be better suited to them.

By keeping the five Ws in mind, a skilled graphic designer could easily create both data visualizations (even if they knew less about aerospace engineering than a middle schooler).

Context and Content

No matter the topic, context gives content purpose. Since content campaigns always compete for clicks, a thoughtfully designed infographic can give even the most nondescript campaign an edge. Some infographic design best practices for content marketing are:

• Include illustrations and graphic elements to grab people’s attention,
• Highlight surprising statistics that will interest your audience,
• Keep written language clear, concise, and approachable,
• Keep visual language simple and systematic by assigning visual variables to data,
• Stick to your client’s brand guidelines (if applicable).

When in doubt, keep things simple. The easier a piece of information is for a person to understand, the more likely they are to remember it!

Final Thoughts

The field of information design is ever-evolving, and its importance will only grow as more aspects of our personal and professional lives move online. In this social climate, increased data literacy can benefit everyone, but for those of us who work in digital marketing, it’s an essential skill for navigating the workforce.

Feeling inspired? Check out the design category on flowingdata.com, read The Mind’s Eye: A Look at Data Visualization Psychology for a deeper understanding of best practices for data-driven design, and reach out to the digital PR experts on Go Fish Digital’s content marketing team for all your information design and data visualization needs.

Understanding Information Design Best Practices for Content Marketing is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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What Is a Trend Cycle, Anyway?

If you’ve never heard the term “trend cycle” before, don’t worry—it means pretty much exactly what it says. Trend cycles are most commonly used in the fashion industry to chart the rise and fall of particular clothing trends. These cycles can be short-lived and niche, spanning only a season or two, while others can last decades or longer, becoming beloved classics that never truly go out of style.

What Causes Trend Cycles?

Broadly speaking, trends are driven by the complex struggle between the forces of nostalgia and anticipation. The most common length for trend cycles is roughly 20 years, which is coincidentally about how long it takes for a child to be born, grow up, and enter the workforce. These young professionals are in a unique position to make work inspired by the media environment of their early childhoods, encouraged by the pulling force of nostalgia. However, they are also positioned to reject trends that were popular during their later teen years, and push towards the as-yet undesigned future.

Here’s a quick example. In the early 2000s, many American children had a shared cultural experience of staying up late to watch reruns of the 90s sitcom The Nanny on Nick at Nite. Fast-forward 20 years, and these children have become the adults who determine what’s fashionable, whether they’re designing clothes themselves or purchasing these products and posting about them on TikTok. This is why items like heart-shaped handbags are currently having a moment—right now, looks inspired by Fran Fine’s wardrobe on The Nanny are having an even bigger moment.

How Do Trend Cycles Manifest Outside the Fashion World?

Now, you may be wondering what all this has to do with graphic design. Why should we care what type of handbags are popular if we’re not the ones marketing them? As graphic designers, I believe we stand to benefit from keeping tabs on what’s trendy, whether it be in our own line of work or in others.

If we zoom out from the fashion world to examine today’s media environment, we can see that the essence of the early 2000s is dominating visual culture right now. For example, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air now has a dramatized reboot, as does popular 2000s cartoon Winx Club. Samsung, Google, and Apple are all bringing back pastel colorways for their flagship phones. Pantone’s color of the year for 2022, Very Peri, is another pastel shade that’s explicitly inspired by our current circumstances:

“…our physical and digital lives have merged in new ways. Digital design helps us to stretch the limits of reality, opening the door to a dynamic virtual world where we can explore and create new color possibilities. With trends in gaming, the expanding popularity of the metaverse and rising artistic community in the digital space, PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri illustrates the fusion of modern life and how color trends in the digital world are being manifested in the physical world and vice versa.”

For those of you who’ve been working in graphic design since the early 2000s, I’d imagine this emphasis on the possibilities of digital design sounds very familiar. Whether you were introduced to design software as a professional using the first iteration of the Adobe Suite, or as a child playing around in Microsoft Paint, there’s no denying that these themes have re-emerged at the forefront of our industry’s collective consciousness. In fact, software upgrades to our modern graphic designers’ toolkit are allowing us to recreate the aesthetic of authentic Y2K graphics, which were often a byproduct of early 2000s software limitations. Neat, right?

How to Harness Our Current Moment in the 20-Year Trend Cycle for Graphic Design Inspiration

All creative fields follow the 20-year trend cycle, and graphic design is no different. Graphic designers know that we never create in a vacuum. Everything we produce exists in a context that’s unique to the time period and media environment we’re living in. With that in mind, it’s important to remember that the original Y2K aesthetic didn’t exist in a vacuum, either. In addition to clothing, countless magazines, websites, ad campaigns, and other artifacts were made during the late 90s and early 2000s which can provide us with graphic design inspiration today.

Check out webdesignmuseum.org to view some authentic Y2K webpages, along with helpful timelines for different companies’ sites and overall web design trends. For typographic inspiration, browse the 2000s tag on fontsinuse.com. If you’d like more modern ideas, try searching for Y2K on behance.com to see how the 20-year trend cycle is being applied in real time.

One word of advice for the aspiring trend-savvy designer: remember that modern interpretations of past trends will never be 100% authentic to the time period they’re inspired by. Therefore, when searching for ideas, it’s helpful to research why certain artifacts were created and how they were received by the public in addition to their aesthetic value. If the meaning of an artifact has changed over time, I believe that can tell you as much about it as the artifact itself. With that in mind, any piece of historical media is fair game—let your imagination run wild!

The Takeaway

We’re currently over two decades out from 2000, so it’s no surprise that aesthetics from that time period are being revived and adapted to fit current tastes, as well as shaping what those tastes are. Next time you’re approaching a project for a particularly cutting-edge client, don’t discard everything you liked about the look and feel of 2010s design, but do take the 20-year trend cycle into account. If they’re really, really cutting-edge, consider creeping into the mid-2000s for some inspiration, as well. And if you’ve got a brand in need of a fashion-forward refresh, look no further than the Content Marketing Team at Go Fish Digital.

Graphic Design & the 20-Year Trend Cycle is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

How a word is written says as much about its intended meaning as the word itself. Context is key here — the typefaces, color scheme, imagery, and written content in your design should all feel like they’re working together, but choosing just one or two typefaces for a project from thousands of available options can be overwhelming and time-consuming if you’re not sure what you’re looking for. If you’re in need of some typeface inspiration, these five resources can help you find the perfect typeface to enhance your project.

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1. Fonts In Use

Fonts In Use is an excellent place to gather historical context on a typeface and its applications. The site showcases type in a variety of settings, including movie posters, clothing, and even the sides of buildings, as well as more top-of-mind uses like websites and book covers.

The archive stretches back decades, and each piece is tagged with the names of the typefaces it’s using, which can be very helpful when you’re trying to build a type pairing. Whether you choose to filter by typeface, topic, or even year of creation, this enormous gallery of applied typography is sure to inspire you.

2. Typewolf

If you’re searching for “what’s trending in type,” check out Typewolf for current popular finds. Typewolf is particularly good for web design inspiration, and like Fonts In Use, it lists out the names of the typefaces used by each webpage. Though the site does lack a search function, you can google the name of a particular typeface plus “Typewolf” to see how others have used it in the past.

Once you’ve found the typeface of your dreams, you may be dismayed after seeing its price tag. Well-designed type is often expensive, and licensing full type families can cost hundreds of dollars. This is where Typewolf’s most useful feature comes in. On each typeface’s dedicated page, Typewolf lists a match for its nearest neighbor on Adobe Fonts, the next resource on this list.

3. Adobe Fonts

If you pay for an Adobe Creative Cloud plan, you have access to Adobe Fonts, a seemingly endless library of typefaces that syncs across all your Adobe apps. This library can be filtered by detailed typography terms such as x-height and figure style, or simpler adjectives like “funky” or “friendly.”

If you’ve already chosen one typeface for a project and are looking for one or two more that complement its style, these advanced search tools will help you narrow the field. The broadest categories available are Sans Serif, Serif, Slab Serif, Script, Mono, and Hand, but if you’re searching for a truly wild typeface, check out the hidden Decorative category by using this search query.

4. Google Fonts

If you don’t have an Adobe account, there’s no need to worry; Google Fonts has you covered. Google Fonts filters aren’t as jargon-heavy as those on Adobe Fonts, so if you’re new to the world of type pairings, this is the site for you. With free and simple licensing, plus the ability to download multiple type families at once, Google Fonts makes it easy to build a collection of typefaces that live natively on your computer. If you’d like to learn more about a typeface on Google Fonts, just click on its page to see all its weights, its full glyph list, and some popular pairings with other Google typefaces.

5. Dieline

Our final resource for typography inspiration is Dieline, a packaging design site that showcases both concept work and real products that are available in stores. Though the site can be a bit confusing to navigate and lacks the typeface identification and search features listed in the previous examples, it provides a refreshing perspective on the role of type in branding and marketing. Their curated Best of the Month lists showcase some truly polished, inspiring work that can get your typographic juices flowing during an art block.

Need to create something elegant and refined? Check out the Spirits and Liquor category. How about something cute and family friendly? The Kids and Baby category definitely has something for you. No matter what style you’re looking for, you’re sure to find a few wonderful examples here.

The Takeaway

Making informed type choices is all about context. Focus on defining the tone of your project, then use the above resources to find typefaces that amplify that tone if you need some inspiration. And if you’re interested in seeing some typographic wizardry at work, reach out to our website design agency. Happy type hunting!

5 Typeface Inspiration Ideas for Graphic Designers is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.