Information Design Guide

Modern life is saturated with ever increasing amounts of information, advertising and media with little time to digest what is being said. Against this background, NGOs and advocates too often find the information they want to communicate, either buried in long reports full of professional jargon and statistics, or overlooked in an endless stream of media releases. Whether communicating to the public, staff, donors or government officials, information design can help NGOs communicate with more impact, increase accessibility, and present issues powerfully.

Visualising Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design is a manual aimed at helping NGOs and advocates strengthen their campaigns and projects through communicating vital information with greater impact. This project aims to raise awareness, introduce concepts, and promote good practice in information design – a powerful tool for advocacy, outreach, research, organisation and education. Through examples, the booklet demonstrates how to use innovative visual graphics to tell a complex and powerful story in a snapshot.

The manual was designed and produced as a collaboration between Tactical Tech and John Emerson of Backspace - a design consultancy dedicated to research, development and promotion of design in the public interest. John’s work portfolio includes print, internet, and broadcast television work for NGOs, not-for-profit corporations, and activist groups.

“I was able to download your booklet on Information Design and find it very useful. Thank you for publishing this and making it available for free. I appreciate the efforts that you do and have been trying to apply the principles in our practice here in my organisation. As a womens information organisation, we produce a lot of printed materials that deal frequently with data, so presenting in a visual format is really necessary for us. Please produce more good information guides like these. More power to you."

Aileen Familara, Isis International, Philippines

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You can download the guide in English or Russian (pdf) right now. If you would like to order a copy for yourself or copies for an event you're organising, see our Order toolkits and Guides page.

This guide was published in January 2008. All the content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.