ABSTRACT
As a graphic designer working for many years with the display of information across multiple media: in print, on screen and in physical spaces, I have been become increasingly concerned with the inter-relationship of visual and virtual data. The way the mind shapes and connects information is no longer as artefacts that are solid, or linear or locked in time. The mind now needs to operate in increasingly fluid spaces. Designers are faced with the challenge of helping people make sense of information that can be disturbingly transient. This has come as no real surprise to me, as even when designing in physical spaces I had always been concerned with the shape and context of a printed page, and with the format and orientation of a package. I never really thought of print as two-dimensional. Later, working on screen in the early days of interactive media, I rapidly came to realise that the design of websites (and other digital platforms) demanded something beyond the replication of flat pages, and that the term ‘web page’ is something of a deceptive misnomer, as these pages can neither be confined to a fixed display size, nor operate in any fixed plane or nowadays in any fixed location. From the start, what went on behind the page, linking information effortlessly into virtual space, became for me the mental challenge when designing the display of information, and the term information architecture, where the virtual has an inherent sense of structure, began to intrigue me, and informed the way I thought about interface design. I am particularly interested in what goes on inside people’s minds when simultaneously processing information both geographically and digitally and in direct relation to one another. It is a natural extension to then think of the design of artefacts for mapping and wayfinding as creating physical snapshots of the mental processes at work in moving from one place to another. In the future I now see exciting challenges in overlaying physical spaces with contextual virtual information, which can both inform and entertain. I have moved from the idea of wayfinding as simply an aide to relocating people, to it being an opportunity for them to step outside the physical and into an enhanced space beyond. The exploration of social, historical and other contextual information, and hitherto unknown creative interventions, offer great opportunities for design in public spaces.
