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Book Reviews
Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics That People Understand
Connie Malamed
Rockport Publishers, Inc., 2009
ISBN 13:978-1-59253-515-6 / ISBN 10: 1-59253-515-1
240 pages
Reviewed by Karen Schriver
KSA Communication Design & Research, Inc USA
Information designers looking for perspective on ways
to engage readers should check out this book. It reviews
the research literature on the cognition of comprehend-
ing visuals, derives principles from this literature, and
illustrates the principles with visuals created by designers
from around the globe.
Malameds 240-page lavishly illustrated book is orga-
nized into two sections. The first is a literature review
on how people process visuals (about 40 pages), and the
second presents six principles for creating visuals (about
180 pages). There are a one-page bibliography, a half-
page glossary of terms, several pages of references, and a
directory of contributors (the designers who created the
example illustrations).
About part one: Reviewing the empirical
literature on comprehending visuals
What makes this book unique and worth a read is
Malameds consistent focus on how people perceive
visuals. She first reviews the research on the cognitive
processes people engage in during perception and inter-
pretation. Her intent is to help designers leverage the
strengths of their audiences cognitive abilities, while at
84 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company
All rights reserved
Information Design Journal 18(1), 8487
2010 John Benjamins Publishing Company
d o i : 10.1075/ idj.18.1.12sch
the same time create designs that compensate for peoples
limitations in processing overly complex designs.
Malamed rightly argues that if designers are to
increase the impact of their work, they must understand
how their audiences perceive, organize, and interpret
communications. She seems keenly aware that while
many designers are skilled in generating elegant designs,
they fail in understanding how audiences actually engage
with their designs.
Malamed makes two major claims in her review, the
first about the nature of visual information processing, and
the second about the limitations of short-term memory.
Research on visual information processing
A major section of the review is devoted to character-
izing how peoples experience with the visual world
activates their perceptual processes rapidly and in
parallel. People are hardwired to interpret what they see.
They attempt to assimilate their interpretations of new
information with what they already know. In making this
point, Malamed summarizes the well known oldnew
finding, namely that people learn best when they connect
new knowledge to prior knowledge.
Book Reviews
Malameds discussion stays on a rather abstract
level though, and she misses opportunities to illustrate
her ideas with examples that would make her claims
concrete. For example, she points to the well-document-
ed finding that people form more cohesive representa-
tions of content (and more accurate schemas) when they
acquire the content both visually and verbally (called
dual coding) rather than acquiring it through visuals
only or text only (called single coding). But Malamed
does not illustrate this so that readers unfamiliar with the
concept could actually use it. Readers would have appre-
ciated before and after versions to better comprehend
her ideas.
Research on short-term memory
The second main point in Malameds review focuses on
the limitations of short-term memory and the impor-
tance of considering the viewers cognitive load; that is,
the demands imposed on working memory at a given
moment. She describes, for example, how some designers
reduce the cognitive load of user interfaces by presenting
the content in layers. This excellent point about designers
need to present content in manageable perceptual units
is one that she illustrates in later parts of the book.
Putting the review together
A theme of the review is that designers need to consider
the audiences characteristics such as age, visual literacy,
expertise, motivation, culture, and reading skill. But the
treatment of these important topics is superficial, about a
paragraph for each, and there is no mention of methods
for learning about these audience characteristics either
before, during, or after we design. Surprisingly, the text
reads as if empirical studies of audience, information
design, and usability do not exist. Also missing is a
2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company
All rights reserved
idj 18(1), 2010, 84-87
discussion of the writing process and how it intersects
with the visual design process. The past few decades
of research on information design show a symbiotic
relationship between the design of visual and verbal
language, a point never addressed.
Malameds discussion of the early perceptual
processes involved in scanning a visual makes a valuable
contribution to the field. But her claims would have been
stronger if the visual examples displayed throughout the
book were explicitly pointed at, analyzed, and discussed
in the text. Surprisingly, she never refers to the dozens of
visual examples in her text as she describes how people
understand visuals. This omission relegates the examples
to serve as editorial illustrations rather than to drive
home her arguments. The lack of explicit text and image
integration makes Malameds book more like traditional
coffee-table books on design.
That said, the books many stunning visual examples
function well without explicit reference in the text
because Malamed constructs good captions, pointing out
what to focus on and giving credit to the design teams
that produced them. The many illustrations and captions
invite the reader to peruse the chapters in any order. The
captions would have been improved by dating the illus-
trations, as some examples appear older than others.
Because the book has no subject or name index, it is
not easy to locate the illustrations by various contribu-
tors, such as Nigel Holmes. Regrettably, the book is not
designed to facilitate easy retrieval of its content, a pity
for the contributors. The reader is left with the lingering
question of whether the contributors of the examples
actually had any of the design intentions that Malamed
assigns to them.
85
Book Reviews
About part two: Presenting principles for
visual design
The bulk of Malameds book describes and illustrates six
principles:
Organizing for perception (25 pages)
Directing the eyes (32 pages)
Reducing realism (26 pages)
Making the abstract concrete (40 pages)
Clarifying complexity (34 pages)
Charging visuals with emotion (22 pages)
Each principle is presented as a chapter: the first part
introducing the principle, then explaining its cognitive
basis, and concluding with ideas for applying it with
plenty of examples along the way.
Organizing for perception
The first principle, organizing for perception, advises
designers to kickstart visual information processing
by using grouping, proximity, shape, line orientation,
size, and color. Malamed recommends that designers
make their designs unique and conspicuous by drawing
on primitive features (e.g. color, motion, orientation,
size, depth, tilt, closure). The idea is that these primitive
features help readers to quickly discriminate among parts
of the message. Malamed also details the rarely discussed
topic of texture. She contends that texture consists of
contrast, orientation, and element repetition enabling
people to distinguish figure from ground. Her exploration
of how people come to notice a graphic is quite good.
Directing the eyes
The second principle, directing the eyes, suggests
that designers can guide the viewers eyes through the
structure of the graphic by using orienting cues such
as arrows, color, and captions. Malamed illustrates
these ideas with a number of excellent visual examples.
Regrettably, there are very few multipage examples and
86 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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idj 18(1), 2010, 84-87
no examples from web-based communication design,
important contemporary contexts for directing the eyes.
Reducing realism
The third principle, reducing realism, advises designers
to avoid high-fidelity images with full color, detail, depth,
shadow, and texture. Instead, they should strive for visual
shorthand representations through line drawings, silhou-
ettes, and iconic images. Malamed suggests that designers
selectively abstract to reduce realism and to simplify
images by limiting the key visual dimensions such as
color, depth, or texture. These are great suggestions, but
readers may hope for more procedural information on
how to selectively abstract as they attempt to move from
realism to reduced realism.
Making the abstract concrete
The fourth principle, making the abstract concrete,
is her longest chapter. Here Malamed reminds us that
verbal language must be processed sequentially word-by-
word, but images, if not cluttered, can reveal main points
in a glance. Malamed illustrates this idea through many
juicy examples of data visualizations and maps. She
provides excellent commentary on a series of maps, but
the level of detail is uneven. Often the reader cannot tell
where the text is heading or how much will be said about
any given subtopic.
Clarifying complexity
The fifth principle, clarifying complexity, makes the
important point that designers should clarify informa-
tion rather than simplify it. To break up complexity,
she recommends a number of strategies, for example,
sequencing explanations. This is one of the few places
in the book that Malamed presents multipage examples.
The examples are most effective when the captions inter-
pret rather than describe.
Book Reviews
Charging visuals with emotion
The sixth principle, charging visuals with emotion,
suggests that designers connect the emotional content
of visuals to the readers life experience. Malamed argues
that when people can relate to a visual, the message is
likely to become more personal and meaningful.
Conclusion
In summary, Malameds move to provide empirical
grounding for common visual design goals represents a
refreshing departure from most design books. Her expla-
nations showing why cognitive research is relevant for
design will get readers thinking and reflecting on their
own experience. Still, some readers will find the literature
review a bit dense and peppered with jargon that is not
explained in the text and absent from the glossary.
The best aspect of Malameds book is her many exam-
ples. The layout of the book is handsome and invites the
reader to linger with the content. The variety of examples
and the international scope of the visuals are outstanding
and will hold readers interest even if they do not read
the text.
Yet not all of the examples are great, and Malamed
misses the opportunity to distinguish pretty good from
outstanding contributions. Even better for learning the
six visual principles would have been to contrast good
and bad applications of them. In addition, designers
would have appreciated seeing examples of electronic
communications. The focus on print, mainly infographics
and posters, seems to date the book and orient it more to
students in traditional design programs.
A different concern that information designers may
have with Malameds examples is the lack of data about
2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company
All rights reserved
idj 18(1), 2010, 84-87
whether viewers actually found them effective. As far as
we know, none of the examples were empirically tested
to assess whether readers quickly perceived their content
and fully understood their messages the main theme
of the book. We also never know if the designers who
contributed their illustrations actually tried to employ
Malameds principles. In more than a few cases, the visu-
als are hard to read, partly because the paper stock is too
glossy and partly because they are reproduced at a scale
too small to be legible. That she presents examples where
only the shapes, patterns, and colors are clear is contra-
dictory to her contention that designers need to move
past focusing just on the perceptual and to direct their
attention to the semantic.
The least satisfying aspect of the book is its struc-
ture. The book would benefit by providing explicit
cues regarding whats coming next. Readers may have
trouble developing an adequate mental model of the
content. Across the book, there are no advance organiz-
ers, overview diagrams, itemized lists, or summaries to
guide readers about what visual features will be discussed
and why. The lack of explicit structural cues makes for a
choppy read, makes it hard to remember which feature
goes with which principle, and places the burden of
integrating the texts content on the reader. While the text
is organized at the chapter level, it wanders at the section
and subsection level. The book closes abruptly in the
middle of a minor point about humor in visuals, without
summary or reflection on how the chapters add up.
Still design practitioners, students, and teachers will
find much to like about this engaging book. They will
find a thoughtful account of the cognition of visual
perception and dozens of compelling visual examples
that warrant scrutiny and close inspection.
87