Information design timeline
This timeline was last updated in July, 2002. If you are a member of the Information Design SIG of STC and would like to work on the timeline, please contact the SIG manager. The email address is on the SIG leaders page.
2000. The IDJ is now published by John Benjamins, under the editorial direction of Piet Westendorp and Karel van der Waarde.
1999. InformationDesign.org is published as a resource for the information design community.
1999. Bob Jacobson publishes the edited volume Information Design.
1997. The STC Information Design SIG is formed.
1997. Karen Schriver publishes Dynamics in Document Design.
1997. Peter Bogaards begins publishing his InfoDesign weblog.
1996. The US-based Information Design Association is formed in a partnership with IIID. It is merged into the IIID in 1997.
1994. Many of the 1978 Het Vennenbos attendees reconvene for a conference in Lunteren, the Netherlands. The InfoDesign and InfoDesign-Cafe lists are created by Yuri Engelhardt.
1991. The London-based Information Design Association was formed.
1989. Richard Saul Wurman publishes Information Anxiety. He follows up with Information Architects (1996), Understanding (1999), and Information Anxiety 2 (2000).
1988. The Vienna-based International Institute for Information Design was formed.
1984. Easterby and Zwaga publish the Het Vennenbos conference papers as Information Design: The Design and Evaluation of Signs and Printed Material.
1983. Edward Tufte publishes The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and follows up later with Envisioning Information (1989) and Visual Explanations (1997).
1979. The first issue of the IDJ was published. Rob Waller and Bryan Smith are co-editors. Waller and Smith "tossed a number of terms about before settling on [the label information design], but whether it was original or not I can't say." (reference)
1978. The Document Design Project is commissioned by the U.S. National Institute of Education. It lasts three years, and among other things, produced two foundational documents: Review of the Relevant Research, and Guidelines for Document Designers.
1978. The NATO Conference on Visual Presentation of Information was held in Het Vennenbos, The Netherlands. The Information Design Journal (IDJ) was conceived during this conference.
1970. Edward Hamilton writes that the "information designer is in reality a teacher--and no better compliment may be paid a professional designer than to call him a teacher." In Graphic Design for the Computer Age.
1861. Charles Minard draws Napoleon's march against Moscow. See the information graphic that Edward Tufte calls "probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn.
