I am Professor of Information Design at the University of Reading. I'm also Director of the new Simplification Centre, which we've set up to help large organisations communicate more effectively to their customers.

My background: I studied Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading in the early 70s before joining the Textual Communication Research Group at the Open University under Michael Macdonald-Ross. Our job was to advise the then new university on the best way to communicate with students, using a variety of media. During this time I completed a doctorate at Reading, and founded Information Design Journal, intended to bring together the different disciplines (academic and practising) relevant to information design - which we defined as words and graphic design working together to communicate complex information. I also ran a number of information design conferences, and was a co-founder of the Information Design Association in 1991. In 1988 I started a consultancy, Information Design Unit, and together with David Lewis who joined in 1990, we grew to over 20 people, and became the UK's largest specialist information design consultancy. We sold it to WPP plc in 2001, and became part of Enterprise IG, one of the world's largest design and branding agencies.