Visual Thinking for Information Design

This second edition applies research on how people perceive, think and pay attention to the practice of visual design. Ware treats a well-made graphic as a cognitive instrument, comparing it to a hammer that extends the hand, except that here the tool extends the viewer's mind. The guidance is concrete and aimed at students, designers and software developers who must make design decisions.

The book is organized around the idea of visual thinking as a process with several stages, each of which can be supported by particular design methods. Its central framework, often called active vision, treats every graphic as something the viewer actively uses to reason rather than passively looks at. Hundreds of examples, many combining written explanation with full-color diagrams, show these methods in use.

The title was changed from Visual Thinking for Design to signal a sharper focus on infographics. This revision has been updated throughout, expands its treatment of pattern perception, adds new material on color assimilation, and introduces a new chapter on conveying ideas through images. That chapter draws on a newer theory of cognition, in which the mind builds and revises predictive mental models, and argues that this theory offers a sound basis for deciding what a presentation should contain.