Professor Rob Waller

Profile

I am an information designer with a wide experience of practice, research, writing and teaching. I am particularly concerned with ways to make reading easier for people who struggle with it, and with helping organisations develop the skills and systems they need to communicate complex information to a wide audience. My career has included roles in academia and design practice.

I have been associated with the creation of an institutional framework for the development of information design, founding Information Design Journal in 1979, and co-founding the Information Design Association in 1992.More recently I was President of the International Institute for Information Design (2017-2023).  I have also organised and advised numerous conferences from the 1970s to the present day. I am a frequent conference speaker, and have published papers on information design theory and practice. I am currently on the drafting committee for the International Standards Organisation (ISO) for the new standard on plain language, which includes guidance about the role of information design.

After training as a typographer (University of Reading, BA 1974, PhD 1988), I was a researcher with the Open University during its pioneering days in the 70s and 80s, working in a multidisciplinary team investigating learning from text. In 1989 I started the consultancy Information Design Unit and together with business partner David Lewis grew this into the UK’s largest information design agency, selling to WPP in 2001, and subsequently leading the merged information design team as part of Enterprise IG, the global branding agency. I have led communications projects for major organisations in telecommunications, energy, financial services and government. My projects have been as diverse as gas bills, flight information displays, dictionaries, museum signing, lottery tickets, passport forms and board games. My clients have included Vodafone, T-Mobile, Barclays, BNP Paribas, British Gas, AXA, Aegon, and many other well known service brands, as well as numerous government agencies such as HMRC, the NHS and DWP.

I was formerly Professor of Information Design at the University of Reading, teaching at MA and PhD levels, and launching a new research group, the Simplification Centre, funded by industry and government agencies. In 2011, the Centre moved out into the voluntary sector, helping many public sector organisations communicate more clearly. I run the annual Information Design Summer School, which attracts people from around the world to learn how information design can improve their communications. 
 

Research interests

My research interests centre around the role of typography and layout in language: enabling writers to extend their means of expression from purely linear to graphically structured language; and supporting readers who engage with text in an active and purposeful way. My earlier academic work developed a genre theory of typographic design, and I have lately been reinterpreting this using the pattern language approach developed by the architect Christopher Alexander. The goal is to articulate what skilled designers do, to make their strategies more accessible to anyone who needs to make information clear. I am also involved with the growing movement of legal information design. 

Qualifications

• BA (University of Reading)
• PhD (University of Reading)

Professional memberships

• International Institute for Information Design
• Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators
• Clarity International