From 2 to 3 April the Information Design Association in the UK is holding a two-day conference at the University of Greenwich, London – admirers of Christopher Wren’s work will have good reasons to go and then get distracted.

But the programme should make for an interesting and lively conference, with talks ranging from Paul Stiff on ‘Information design before designers’ to Sunita Yeomans on the redesign of the Argos catalogue (Argos is perhaps the downmarket UK retailer). Our special attention is on the afternoon of the first day, with three papers about Isotype. Hyphen Press’s book on the subject, The transformer, has been making familiar slow progress, but is now almost with the printer. We will be taking orders for it at the conference, from a small ‘merchandising stall’.