The Humble Nutrition Label

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I am in a hotel lobby in Portland, OR. I am attended Society for the Teaching of Psychology's Annual Conference on Teaching. I did a talk with my friend Jenny Kunz on syllabus redesign. We found that incorporating graphic design principles in syllabi improve retention of syllabus information.  

Anyway, that reminded me of the recent passing of Burkey Belser. Who is that? He is the graphic designer who created the the labels on each and every food item sold in America. I learned about his passing from this remembrance in NPR.


IT IS A FREQUENCY TABLE, Y'ALL. I never thought about it this way until, like, a week ago. After seeing these and using these for years and years.

Okay, first, let's just take a moment to admire one of Belser's professional head shots.

RIGHT?!

Anyway, I had never heard of  Belser until I came across this remembrance on NPR:


The nutrition box hit store shelves in 1994 Creating the official food information panel was a complicated process, with input from business groups and health advocates, along with experts at the Food and Drug Administration. Pie and bar charts were ruled out; so were other illustrations and colors, as the design team worked through 35 iterations. When the finished product came out, it was hailed as a success. "I applaud the person who designed the Nutrition Facts label that's on every food package now being sold in the U.S.," the Italian designer Massimo Vignelli said in Print, the American Institute of Graphic Design's magazine, in 1996. "That is a masterpiece of information architecture, and quite a victory for social responsibility."


How to use in class:

1. Frequency table example.

2.Sometimes, I like to remind my students that the examples I have for them in class aren't necessarily the most exciting in the world, but they serve to demonstrate the ubiquity of statistics, when they are so common place that you don't even notice them, but they are there. Mandated by the government. Created with usability in mind. 


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