Picture of Rob Waller

I am an experienced simplification consultant, specialising in information design, service design, and brand experience. I've worked in many sectors, including financial services, government, telecommunications, energy, and retail.

You can check me out on LinkedIn, or a fuller CV is downloadable here.

Upcoming events

August 2023: I'm on the judging panel for New Zealand's Plain Language Awards again, so I'll be chairing a small group looking at the public sector entries.

18-22 September 2023: I'll be in Vienna where we're putting on a week-long course in Universal Design (inclusive design) for the staff of the Academy of Fine Arts, Katowice, Poland.

18-19 January 2024: I'll be at Tampere University, Finland, speaking at a conference on legal communications with the Sarjis research group - they specialise in comic contracts, so it should be interesting.

The 1st Thursday, every month: I organise an online seminar in a series called IIID Conversations. You can find them on the IIID website.

Recent events

12-13 June 2023: I was in Brussels for a meeting of the ISO group drafting the Plain Language Standard. The main standard has just been published, and I'm helping to draft a new Part on document design.

23-24 May 2023: The Information Design Summer School moved to Vienna this year, with a three-day workshop just before the Vision Plus XIX conference organised by the International Institute for Information Design.

22 February 2023: I took part in Hannele Korhonen's series of online discussions: Legal Design Thinking IRL (I looked this up and it stands for In Real Life). You can watch it on her Lawyers Design School website if you're interested.

7-8 December 2022: I chaired a discussion panel on workshop at the WorldCC Foundation Academic Symposium on 'Proactive contract design for better business and social outcomes'. It relates to my work on legal information design that makes contracts and business relationships clearer.

6 December 2022: I gave a talk for the European Commission’s Directorate-General of Translation. Every year they run a Clear Writing Week, and I talked about how information design works together with plain language. There is a recording on Vimeo.

24 November 2022: I was at Universiteit Utrecht as part of an expert panel to comment on an interesting research project called ‘Empowering Consumers through Intelligible Contracts in the New Energy Era’.

27 October 2022: The winners of New Zealand's Plain Language Awards were announced. I've been one of the judges for a number of years now, and always enjoy their very thorough process.

19 October 2022 at 11am: I gave a talk about my career and approach, for students at my old department at the University of Reading, in one of their Baseline Shift seminars. There is a recording on Vimeo.

13 September 2022 at 1pm. I presented a webinar for the European Association of Science Editors on Layering: a design solution for multiple audiences.

Current roles and activities‍

I coordinate the Simplification Centre, a not-for-profit social enterprise that helps organisations develop clearer communications.  I teach and run workshops for design students – recently I've been at the Royal College of Art, Brunel University, UCA Epsom, Aalto University (Finland), Danube University Krems (Austria) and the Academy of Fine Arts, Katowice (Poland).

My background

I studied and later taught typography and graphic communication at the University of Reading, with a doctorate for work on the relationship between typography and language. My academic career has included research into learning from text for the Open University, founding and editing Information Design Journal, organising many conferences, and chairing the Information Design Association.

In 1988 I started Information Design Unit and, with business partner David Lewis, grew it to become the UK's largest information design agency. It was acquired by WPP plc in 2001, and become part of the multidisciplinary branding agency Enterprise IG (now renamed The Brand Union) – one of the world's largest, with over 20 offices.


‍