The “Vision Plus” conference series is an international, interdisciplinary forum for information design.

Our theme in 2026:

Information design and civic administration: trust, tradition and toxicity

The relations between governments and information design.

Civic administration is built on documents to guide and support public life. Examples of these documents are licenses (driving, hunting, fishing), forms, governmental websites, regulations (parking signs, local trash disposal), anything with taxes, labelling (food, chemicals, medicines), passport applications, visa and residence permits, immigration processes, and anything to do with voting systems.

These seemingly neutral artifacts aim to enable citizens to smoothly arrange administrave matters. In contrast, these documents often also represent toxic processes: bureaucratic opacity, inequity, discrimination, and systemic failure.

Civic communications enable all citizens to interact with government smoothly and without errors. Civil servants strive to communicate clearly and many departments employ information designers and writers. There are great examples where interactions are effective and go flawless, fast, and pleasant.

But there are major challenges. All societies include a large number of people who struggle with literacy, language or digital access. They are among those who are most in need of social benefits. And there are documented cases where politicians appear to have used complex bureaucratic processes to discourage people from claiming their entitlements.

This is why we want to interrogate the role of information design in government interactions with designers, governmet representatives, and other professionals who work within this field.

Call for contributions

More about previous VisionPlus conferences on the IIID Website