Graphic design by numbers

0123456789. These numbers, says author and designer Roger Fawcett-Tang ‘have a universal appeal among designers’.

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He adds, ‘They are multilingual, universally understood, varied in form, highly adaptable and yet still instantly recognisable, since each of the ten characters has its own strong and unique identity.’

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Fawcett-Tang’s new book Numbers in Graphic Design, which has been designed by his consultancy Struktur Design, looks at how designers deal with number-heavy information.

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Part practical case-study, part Information is Beautiful-style paen to the glory of infographics, the book presents a series of projects from around the world, split into categories such as order (ie timetables and listings) and chronology (calendars, diaries and clocks).

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Although the majority of the projects featured are print or digital, some of the most interesting are wayfinding – such as Studio Myerscough’s ‘stencil-shadow’ signage for London College of Communication and L2M3 Kommunikationsdesign’s ‘perspectives’ signage for Kreissparkasse in Ludwigsburg, which can only be read from the end of corridors.

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There’s also an intriguing section on clocks, featuring Studio Tonne’s 24 – a depiction of the passage of time over 24 hours made solely from a minute-hand ‘tick’, and Commune Inc.’s TextClock iPhone app – which treats time as a sequence of words, with no numbers.

Numbers in Graphic Design, by Roger Fawcett-Tang, is published by Laurence King in October priced at £28.

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  • Phil Treble November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I think you’ll find that should be ‘Roger Fawcett-Tang’.

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