Your Team Doesn’t Need a Graphic Designer—It Needs an Information Designer

If you’ve ever caught yourself saying “we need to hire a graphic designer for that!” it’s possible you’ve missed the point entirely. Perhaps unfair, perhaps more colloquial than accurate, the term “graphic designer” has often become synonymous with “the guy or girl who makes things look pretty.”

But pretty is only a piece of the puzzle.

I sat down not too along ago with an auditor for the state legislature who had come to me for advice. His team was wrestling over how to communicate the complexity of the pharmaceutical supply chain and the role of pharmacy benefits managers in negotiating prescription prices. The auditors’ goal? Show how the flow of funds affects the consumer.

There’s an important story to be told in that complex set of information. Making a graphic that looks pretty—finding the right fonts, pulling together an attractive color scheme, fitting in a few nice icons—isn’t in and of itself going to help lawmakers or consumers make decisions. Making their message stick with key constituents would require a clear set of communication objectives, a detailed narrative that networks key concepts, a rhetorical layering of key phrases that harmonize with data points, a visually coherent design, and…a usability test. It would require design thinking in ways that “graphic designers” aren’t usually credited with doing.

Now, to be clear, I don’t mean to disparage any graphic designer. Clearly, as any skilled designer would attest, there is much more to graphic design than just prettying up a nice logo. But that’s often the perception with graphic design—“go get our design guy to make this look good before it goes public!” And that perception is misguiding companies into thinking they’ll actually get the best communication out of a person not necessarily trained to work with complex, technical, or scientific information.

Now, let me be clear: graphic design, truly, is an area of design that requires an intensive skills set. Graphic designers have an amazing vision for establishing trends, grabbing attention, setting moods, and creating experiences. They entice, persuade, attract, and emphasize. They add the flavor to the things we see, read, and experience. And they tend to be really queued into pop culture, human idiosyncrasy, and the details that strike chords. Plus, they can draw really cool things.

But a graphic designer doesn’t inherently possess the same skills set as an information designer (and vice versa) and their roles should be perceived differently.

Why? Because you can make a website look pretty and have it still be pretty awful. You can assemble a PowerPoint that looks appealing but that still makes your presentation appalling. And you can make a flowchart look fancy but still communicate fluff.

Graphic design, at least in cultural nomenclature, tends to be viewed as the tool to evoke visceral, emotional responses to products or ideas. It’s what the advertising and product packaging folks do. Dictionary.com—probably the most culturally used resource for definition-grabbing—calls graphic design “the art or profession of visual communication that combines images, words, and ideas to convey information to an audience, especially to produce a specific effect.” Under this guise, the profession “conveys” ideas to “produce effects.” It’s a very you-give-they-react understanding of design.

Information design, on the other hand, is a field of study that is more broadly concerned with cognition, usefulness, and behavior. Wikipedia’s definition (which draws from the experts’ take on it) describes information design like this: “the practice of presenting information in a way that fosters efficient and effective understanding of it…[and] for displaying information effectively, rather than just attractively or for artistic expression.” Under this guise, information designers “foster [efficiency]” to produce “effective understanding.” It’s a very you-assemble-they-understand perspective of design.

That’s not to say we can’t merge the two—or that there aren’t visceral reactions to information design or cognitive responses to graphic design—but there are separate and distinct reasons for implementing graphic design than there are for implementing information design.

Sometimes you need both, sometimes you don’t.

In a wayfinding system, for example, you’ll need a collaborative effort between graphic designer and information designer. While it could potentially be the same person, the separation of design tasks is important. In wayfinding, there is an important element of branding, which falls under the graphic design umbrella. In a large hotel, the visual style of the signage makes an important contribution to the visceral, emotive response of the attendees. But, in this case, the usefulness factor is arguably more important, and the elements that physically guide people towards conference rooms, restrooms, exits, pools, ice machines, fitness facilities, stores, restaurants, and so forth fall under the role of the information designer. Are the signs positioned at the right height, in the right locations, to get the majority of people with varying degrees of abilities and native languages to where they need to go? Are the safety exit plans properly located and positioned and created with utmost clarity in mind? Has the system been tested for user error and confusion?

Wayfinding design is an example that requires the skills set of both graphic designer and information designer. Most websites would also require the skills of both as the merging of emotional, seductive response is almost as important as navigation and functionality. But not all types of communications will need both. Most advertisements, product packaging, poster displays, billboards, logotypes, and stand-alone signs can be created with the skills of a graphic designer. Complex flowcharts, educational infographics, process diagrams, and data visualizations would require the skills of an information designer.

In many corporate, educational, governmental, and non-profit settings, the communication of data and processes is incredibly important to the success of disseminating an idea. Often, within the communication, is an inherent need to both grab attention and to educate. The goals of visualizing such information is often to enhance understanding, improve efficiency, and simplify complexity. Only tangentially are the visceral responses to style and design necessary. Sure, good information design needs to be attractive, but that isn’t necessarily the focal point. It’s about communicating complexity through accessible design.

Too often, leaders of organizations focus on the pretty before they focus on the practical. Making things look nice is important—famed cognitive scientist and design expert Donald Norman effectively argued  that “attractive things do work better”—but if that’s all we focus on, we may never get to where we need to go.

When I am tasked to create a model of the pharmaceutical supply chain that emphasizes the role of pharmacy benefits managers in the flow of funds to an average consumer, there is much more at stake than making something that will catch the eye. In fact, there is a deeply rooted ethical consideration about communicating accurate information that leads to correct interpretation of data and processes. This is a graphic that could, potentially, change laws and affect businesses and consumers.  

Organizations that need to communicate comparisons, tell the stories of complex data sets, or teach their teams where they’re positioned within a complex flow of moving parts don’t need graphic designers. They need information designers. Both skillsets are undoubtedly important to organizations, but they’re often coming from different people (but not always). Both graphic designers and information designers both possess an intense level of creative talent; they just manifest that creativity in different ways. Often, though, organizations fail to realize that, in their particular communication need, what they’re looking for is not someone who can make their documents or products looks beautiful, but someone who can understand processes, distill complexity, and communicate in written and visual detail at high levels of accuracy and professionalism.