The infographic is a utilitarian form: it gets information out, with an eye for the aesthetic. Infographic designer and illustrator Jing Zhang’s practice exemplifies this balance through clever — and playful — infographics that thoughtfully integrate instructive words with eye-popping visuals. However, even with a portfolio that already includes UNICEF and Toyota, Jing admits there is always room to improve how that information is delivered.

One improvement Jing predicts: fewer words. “Layout design needs to be a compliment to the illustration,” Jing explains. Her current process begins with organization, with the source material in mind: “I would normally plan the layout first, then design the illustration, then finally finish with the copy and title.” Words, according to Jing, are treated as supplementary to the images. “Words are there to finish the story,” she insists. Therefore they should be used sparingly to ensure the greatest impact.

In a sense, Jing predicts, information design will get more and more minimalistic, with fewer text moments and less opportunities “to read.” The visual, the graphic, will carry the weight while undoing classic approaches to layouts. “There's less of a rigid form of graphic design,” she says, noting that fixed formats – like the golden ratio, a formula of organization tied to the Fibonacci sequence — will not be necessary. “Previously, some key information would take the most prominent place,” Jing says. “But now the graphic and the story will.”

To lay out a book is to negotiate new technologies with centuries of printed matter. For Shannon Harvey and Adam Michaels, founders of design studio IN-FO.CO and publishing imprint Inventory Press, to lay out also means to go back and forth between process and influence. “Our work sometimes calls for working carefully within the rules of an established or existing genre, and other times for working out new hybrid forms,” Adam explains. The future of layout design for the duo means continuing to experiment between the old and new

From textbooks like A *New* Program for Graphic Design to a celebration of the now-iconic horror film Get Out, Adam and Shannon begin by researching source material. That material helps them determine if they should incorporate a 50-year-old text for inspiration, or weigh what is lost and gained by developing the product into printed matter. For a project like the expanded reprint of Blueprint for Counter Education, for instance, they adapted physical materials and an original published work from 1970 to produce two smaller books and three posters in a slipcase. By virtue of the source, the layout process was both physical and not, something caught between periods. “The reprint became a complex process of digitally recreating the layers of that initial, tactile and analog design process,” Shannon says of the process, which included working with 1GB photos and reproducing overprinting effects previously manually produced, the pair found pleasure in this back and forth.

“You can do a lot on a screen, but you can’t do it all,” Shannon insists. That’s why the pair see the future of layout growing more pluralistic, including voices previously underrepresented and layering influences across time and medium that are digestible for any reader and introduce ideas that have yet to be presented in books. “It’s about making sure that whatever we do in the press is honoring the voices involved,” Shannon concludes. “We’re honoring that content and presenting it in a way that is most readily understood.”

Nu Goteh sees any design — including layout design — as a team effort. So to discover what is to come for the practice, the co-founder of design-centered Deem Journal and the studio Room for Magic looks to his collaborators. “My job and my goal is setting up the designer for success, to give enough structure and expectations so we’re all aligned, with room to play and develop,” Nu says.

Through a more inclusive process, Nu and his team produce designs that seek to be authentic instead of “perfect,” resulting in a more fluid process between contributors, from designers to photographers to writers. “We spend a lot of time at the transition point,” Nu says, speaking to the Deem design process. “Before we get any text or images, we ideate. What are some cool things we’re seeing out there? How does that translate to us? All of that is to be considered before the layout.”

Historical and cultural contexts are considered as well in order to make for more diverse design. “We’re trained and in love with modern design,” Nu says, alluding to the design world’s fixation with European design, minimalism, and so-called classic modes of making. But Nu’s process includes questioning and decolonizing the canon. “When it comes to layout, that is a space that we are consciously pushing ourselves and questioning ourselves in,” he says. “It’s about not feeling beholden to a checklist of ‘what good design should be.’” For example, something as simple as an unfocused photo recently challenged Nu’s design assumptions. “This is how it was meant to be communicated. As much as we try to be perfectionists, what’s more important? Showing up perfect or showing up authentic?”

Overall, Nu sees layout continuing to embrace more teamwork, collaboration, and consideration to make way for more fluid designs. “We have to be a bit more flexible with the process,” he says. “People need time and space to work and I respect that, especially when laying out a magazine that needs to be diverse and have a rhythm.”

Laying out a magazine is a lot like gymnastics, according to Anton Ioukhnovets: Mastery of front of the book’s design requires technique and knowledge of typographic hierarchies and grids to create items like the table of contents, similar to the way a champion of the balance beam and parallel bars needs focus, and trained muscle and skill. The feature well of a magazine, in contrast, may include longform interviews, which allows designers room to play similar to a gymnast’s more artistic floor routine. Anton, who is currently creative director for 30 Point—and has designed layouts for GQ, Esquire, W, and more top magazines — knows where it’s important to adhere to the rules and it’s appropriate to disobey the rules. It’s this ability to know when to break the rules that will define the future of layout design

“At GQ, we were focused on concepts,” Anton elaborates. “We read the text, then formulated and distilled the main idea to express it typographically.” Independent magazines, like Achtung, tend to be more of a “sort of freestyle,” like a decision to tell a story over the span of 60 pages instead of six. But no matter the publication, Anton craves modern layouts that communicate more attitude or charisma, envisioning a future where layout is like film. “A cinematic treatment of typography can unfold over a few pages,” he says. “All in an effort to tell a story in a new, interesting way to make the layout more visceral. As a reader, you get touched. You might not like it, you might love it, but you feel an emotion.”

He’s awaiting a disruption in the industry, like how Netflix shifted movies from two-hour affairs to hours-long binges. “I don’t know what it would look like [for magazines], but the format hasn’t changed in most places” Anton says, pointing to what comprises printed works and how those works are printed. Even though he’s decades into his career, he is happy to keep waiting. “Print takes time,” Anton says. “You have to give yourself that time. You have to adapt to the speed of the medium.”