Information Design Journal

IDJ is a platform for discussing and improving the design, usability, and overall effectiveness of ‘content put into form’ — of verbal and visual messages shaped to meet the needs of particular audiences. IDJ offers a forum for sharing ideas about the verbal, visual, and typographic design of print and online documents, multimedia presentations, illustrations, signage, interfaces, maps, quantitative displays, websites, and new media. IDJ brings together ways of thinking about creating effective communications for use in contexts such as workplaces, hospitals, airports, banks, schools, or government agencies. On the one hand, IDJ explores the design of information, with a focus on writing, the visual design, structure, format, and style of communications. On the other hand, IDJ seeks to better understand the ways that people understand, interpret, and use communications, with a focus on audiences, cultural differences, readers’ expectations, and differences between populations such as teenagers, elderly or the blind.

IDJ publishes research papers, case studies, critiques of information design and related theory, reviews of current literature, research-in-progress, interviews with thought leaders, discussions of practical problems, book reviews, and conference information. Contributions should be relevant to a multi-disciplinary audience from fields such as: communication design, writing, typography, discourse studies, applied linguistics, rhetoric, usability research, instructional design and graphic design. Contributions should be based on appropriate evidence and make clear their implications for practice.

IDJ publishes its articles Online First.

[Volumes 12 (2004) and 13 (2005) were published under the title Information Design Journal + Document Design]