An article in the Wall Street Journal points to this guy's blog, who suggests that the graphical layout of the Presidential Daily Briefing sucks.

Here's the original.

Here's Storey's revamped design.

The point of the WSJ piece is that the way in which you present information is damn near as important as the information itself.

Good point. The original briefing was in sans-serif font, with little or no indicators of its relative importance. One other graphic designer suggested that a small map of relevant locations affected be included at the top of the daily briefings, a visual cue to help the President locate and remember the brief more easily.

All good ideas. I'm an instructional designer, deciding the best way to lay out on-line course material in an effective format. I do the same with technical documentation. So yeah, how you present the information is important.

It might be worth our national security for the White House to hire an "information architect", as the article calls it, for a piddling $50K a year, don't you think?