It clarifies the development context of Information Design, and then explores the focus area and core methods. Based on the concept of co-occurrence in the definition of Information Design, the development of the subject is traced back to the source, and the narrow definition of Information Design is constructed by distinguishing the basic and derivative of the research purposes, objects and elements. Hereby, the Information Design methods are collected and classified from three dimensions:design flow, method attribute and information processing, and the classification results are clustered by force diagram. The connotation of the concept of Information Design is the high-level transformation of information, and the extension is Information Architecture and Visualization. Information Design methods mainly come from the fields of Cartography, Graphic Design and Cognitive Science. The research is based on using mixed research methods for visualization in the delivery stage. The future development trends of Information Design mainly include information forecasting and quantitative research.