The design, that very useful thing

Here is a small tribute to my sister, who is not a journalist or a designer. What is going for her is health economics, and she must be doing well, because she has just been awarded for her doctoral thesis in 2014. María. At 23 I left home, when she was 13 or 14. I had already managed to teach her some guitar chords and that she liked rock and roll a little. It didn't cost me much because I had the skills to do almost anything I wanted.

A few years later I came home to say hello, and she had already finished a degree in economics. I don't really know how it fell into health economics. He was interested in something like people's motivation to donate blood, so he worked on a statistical formula to analyze the responses that apparently had an impact. They are complex things that I am trying to explain fatally so that they are understood.

One day he called me to make a poster about this dry matter and for me it was a discovery. I did it in a weekend and I gave it to him proud because he had managed to understand it. It seems that he liked it, because at the time he asked me for another poster, then some forms and finally, a year ago, the cover of his thesis. She has found an ally in her brother and has understood, in my opinion, the true value of design as a tool to find answers and better understand reality. In design she has seen the need to make herself understood and in infographics — at an uncomplicated level — a basic tool but also with enormous potential if it is used well.

All this can be seen in their presentations, in how they organize the content, or in how they present the text on the page. You don't have to be a designer to appreciate it, and you don't have to be a designer, like her, to design a presentation or work with a certain art. His doctoral thesis uses Futura 12 pts. from the first page to the last, and he has achieved what his brother did not achieve in 15 years: make it read beautifully.

Design is a tool to ask ourselves questions and understand many things in life. Also to make it more beautiful, entertaining, interesting, balanced: this is an exciting toolbox for anyone who is curious and patient to use it.