Karel van der Waarde studied graphic design in the Netherlands (The Design Academy, Eindhoven) and in the UK (De Montfort University, Leicester and the University of Reading). He received his doctorate in 1994 for a dissertation entitled: ‘An investigation into the suitability of the graphic presentation of patient package inserts’. In 1995, he started a design – research consultancy in Belgium specializing in the testing of information design. His company develops patient information leaflets, instructions, forms, protocols, and the information architecture for websites. Most of the projects are related to information about medicines for patients, doctors and pharmacists. Typical products are information for patients (Bayer Pharmaceuticals, GSK, Proctor & Gamble, Novo Nordisk, Genzyme, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Omnicare, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Tibotec, Voisin, …), and information for doctors and pharmacists (Ministry of Health, Brussel; RIZIV, Brussel; BCFI, Gent). Avans University of Applied Sciences (Breda, The Netherlands) has appointed him as scholar in Visual Rhetoric in 2006. This research post investigates the development and use of visual communication with a longer term aim to support the relations between practice, research and education. The research focuses in the next three years on the criteria that are used by different groups of people to evaluate and assess graphic design. The framework of this investigation is provided by the relations between ‘visual argumentation’ and ‘graphic design’. This describes graphic design as three different kinds of argument-types: ‘visual logic’, ‘visual rhetoric’ and ‘visual dialectics’. Karel van der Waarde frequently publishes and lectures about visual information. Publications have appeared in Dutch, Polish, Japanese, English, Spanish and Portuguese. He is moderator of the InfoDesign and InfoDesign-Cafe discussion lists. Van der Waarde is a life-Fellow of the Communications Research Institute (Melbourne, Australia), a board member of International Institute for Information Design (IIID, Vienna, Austria) and editorial board member of Information Design Journal, Iridescent, the Poster and Visible Language.