Vignelli Center Lecture: Joel Katz

Lecture title: "Design for Understanding: Issues in Information Design"

Joel Katz is a designer, photographer, author, and teacher, His firm, Joel Katz Design Associates, is known for its thoughtful and user-centered work in print and in the environment. His book, Designing Information: Human Factors and Common Sense in Information Design, was on the Designers and Books' list of Notable Books of 2012.

Winner of the Rome Prize and elected an AIGA Philadelphia Fellow in 2002, Katz is Adjunct Professor of Graphic Design at The University of the Arts, where he teaches Design for Understanding to second-semester Juniors.

His most recent book, And / Said No Lord: A Twenty-One-Year-Old in Mississippi in 1964, was published in March 2014.

Information design has become a hot topic and the horrific contraction, infographic, a current buzzword.

In this illustrated talk, Joel Katz shares his views and shows what makes information designs function successfully-or not. Presenting examples of his own work, designs from his book and from his class at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Katz will dissect various aspects of information design, such as why pyramids fail, metaphor, geography versus experience, anatomy versus function, and organizational clarity.