The Daily Heller: Will Burtin’s Seeing is Understanding Design

Highbrow Magazine: Will Burtin: An Overlooked Designer Whose Legacy Is Still Relevant Today

Annette Hexelschneider: "Communicating Knowledge Visually" - a book review (in German)

EYE Magazine: Magic and logic

Sandra Rendgen: Will Burtin, master of visual knowledge

Will Burtin broke through many communication barriers which had limited traditional communication forms. R. Roger Remington and Sheila Pontis’ new book Will Burtin’s Scientific Approach to Information Design is a brilliant choice to bring this history into relevance today. It is cleverly supported by unique archival materials which have never been seen before by the public.
—Richard Saul Wurman, Information Architect

With their new book, Roger Remington and Sheila Pontis take a fresh look at why Burtin’s work—making sense out of complexity—is so important today. Using a clear, methodical, and well-organized format (Burtin would have loved it!), the authors describe in detail a number of his graphic projects, and also his three-dimensional, walk-in explanations of various functions in the human body.
—Nigel Holmes, Graphic Designer

Will Burtin’s modernist aesthetics and human-centered approach contributed immensely to the history of modern design. Driven by a passion to clarify complex issues, he established a workflow that included scientific research and user interviews as part of his regular practice. This book is a beautiful walk through Burtin’s most impressive exhibition and editorial projects, and demonstrates how design and accessibility are insolubly intertwined in information design and its related fields.
—Sandra Rendgen, Visualization Strategist

Sheila Pontis and Roger Remington provide a clear and engaging account of designer Will Burtin’s guiding philosophy and the contextthat shaped it. In the course of describing Burtin’s scientific approach to design–and using it more broadly as a framework for examining the practice and teaching of information design today–the authors prompted me to think more critically about my own science visualization influences and methodology. There’s lots of food for thought here for sciencecentric graphics fans, students, practitioners, and educators alike.
—Jen Christiansen, Art Director, Scientific American

The life and work of Will Burtin are very interesting as an example of how a pioneer in a “heroic” time of Graphic Design invented his professional practice. But the value of the book is not in the biography, but on the analyses of Burtin’s projects and of his ways of working. Working for large corporations at a time in which the USA was economically rising, he enjoyed the possibility of generous budgets for the realization of projects of very diverse and complex kind: from mega promotions of corporations to scientific and technical information dissemination.
—Jorge Frascara, Design Professor Emeritus

Burtin’s body of work provides excellent models for today’s information design practice and this well- organized and beautifully designed book should be on every graphic design curriculum’s information design reading list and all design bookshelves.
—Katherine McCoy, Graphic Designer

Remington and Pontis unapologetically present Burtin’s mid-century modernist ideals of design as a progressive force, committed to scientific objectivity and rigor. At the same time, they also make it clear that design is not a science but a holistic discipline in which the designer acts as an intermediary–a mediator, visualizer, business partner, teacher, and storyteller.
—Dietmar Offenhuber, Information Design Educator