So there we are, wandering around London's Design Museum, notebook in hand, admiring the exhibits in a display devoted to good information design, when what should we see but a work by our very own graphics and design desk.
The exhibition - 'You are here' - is all about communication without words, (to quote the museum's press release). It takes items of mundane utility and hoists them out of context, which quite often has the effect of making them appear quite beautiful. Have you checked out the elegant simplicity of a road sign recently?
But you can read a review of the exhibition in Sunday's paper. We're only blogging this because of our childish excitement at seeing a page from our humble organ held up as an example of effective information display. So we decided to reproduce it here, just for you, for one night only, exclusive to the Observer blog...
The Observer blog good taste ombudsperson softly voices the concern that it might be a bit insensitive to sound so triumphant when the content of the graphic is so serious and touches on so much suffering. The blog looks at its shoes, duly chastened.
Moving swiftly back to the subject of design masterpieces. The Observer graphics department and the blog assert with one voice that by far the best piece of information presentation ever is Harry Beck's 1933 model for the London Underground map.
You can get your own copy and see a Flash presentation of the history of the tube map and generally geek out on the London Undergorund site. We would put the map on the blog but LRT have an uncompromising copyright message that puts us off.
