Information design personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

I became interested in information design by redrawing a map. My cycling club's Sunday route sheets were photocopied fragments of an Ordnance Survey map with arrows drawn on in biro, and newer riders kept missing turns. I spent a few weekends making a simple strip diagram instead: the route stretched into a straight line, with junctions, gradients, cafes and the two awkward railway crossings marked along it. It was not beautiful, but people stopped getting lost, and I started noticing how much of the information around me could be treated the same way. What draws me to this subject is that it sits between things I already enjoy separately. In Geography I like the moment when a choropleth map makes a pattern obvious that a table of figures hides. In Mathematics I like understanding why a scale behaves the way it does, and what a logarithmic axis quietly does to a reader's impression of growth. In Graphic Communication I enjoy the craft: spacing, hierarchy, the decision to remove a border rather than add one. Information design seems to be the discipline that asks all of these questions at once, and asks them on behalf of a specific reader rather than in the abstract. I am also interested in the ethics of it. A diagram is a set of choices about what to leave out, and those choices affect whether someone catches a train, understands a bill or takes the right tablet. I want to study the subject properly rather than rely on instinct: to learn how research with real users is done, how typography behaves at different sizes and distances, and how to test whether a design actually works instead of assuming that because I understand it, everyone will.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My A-levels are Graphic Communication, Mathematics and Geography, which between them cover much of the groundwork I think this course needs. Graphic Communication has given me the most direct preparation. My current project is a wayfinding and signage scheme for our college's new building, which has three entrances and confusing floor numbering. I surveyed where people hesitated, sketched pictograms, and tested two sign layouts by printing them at full size and taping them to the wall to see how far away they could be read. I learned that my first icon set was too detailed to work at a distance, and that consistent placement mattered more than colour coding. Mathematics has been useful in ways I did not expect. Working with percentages, rates of change and statistical measures has made me more careful about how figures are presented: I now think about whether an axis starts at zero, what an average conceals, and how small a sample is before a comparison stops meaning much. Geography contributes the mapping side, including basic GIS work on a fieldwork report about footfall on our local high street, where I had to decide how to classify data into bands without distorting the story. Outside the specification I have been reading about the subject's history. Otto Neurath's Isotype work interested me because the pictograms repeat rather than stretch, so quantity stays readable, and Alberto Cairo's writing on charts pushed me to think about the reader's task before choosing a form. I also keep a notebook of diagrams I meet in daily life, from washing machine dials to bus timetables, with notes on what I would change.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

For the past two years I have helped design and lay out our college student newsletter, which is distributed as a two-page PDF and on noticeboards. I handle the layout and any charts. When we published results from a survey on study spaces, my first version was a pie chart with nine segments that nobody could interpret; I replaced it with a sorted bar chart and a short sentence summarising the main finding, and the editor told me she finally understood our own data. Working to a fortnightly deadline with other people's copy has taught me to make decisions quickly and to accept edits without treating them as criticism. At home I made a medication timetable for my grandmother, who takes several tablets at different times and had been relying on the pharmacy's printed labels. I drew a grid of days and times, used the actual colours and shapes of the tablets rather than names she did not recognise, and printed it large enough to read without her glasses. We revised it twice after she pointed out that the morning column was too close to the edge to see when the sheet was on the fridge. It was a small job, but it showed me that the person using a design knows things the designer does not. My Saturday job in a garden centre involves plant labels, till queues and a lot of customers asking where things are. I redrew the seed display's category signs when my supervisor agreed they were unclear, keeping to the shop's existing colours. Cycling remains my main hobby, and I still produce route sheets for club runs, now with elevation profiles aligned to the turn list so riders can see what is coming.

This example has 4,920 characters across the three answers. Use it for ideas and structure. Your own UCAS answers must fit within 4,000 characters in total, including spaces.

Review this personal statement

Latest reviews