Skip to main content

Edward Tufte and why he matters

Well, first of all, he's my hero, and has been since I first attended one of his seminars back in 1987. More to the point, I'm far from alone in my appreciation of him, and here's why:

I described Edward Tufte as a graphic designer, but that’s not exactly right. His field is almost sui generis, containing bits and pieces of art direction, data-crunching, economics, historical research, and plain old expository writing. It’s often labeled “information architecture,” or “analytic design.” Tufte himself describes it many ways, but one is drawn from a classic piece of science writing: “escaping Flatland,” or using paper’s two dimensions to convey several more. Another, more acidic description: “getting design out of fashion and out of the hands of Microsoft.”

His four books have collectively been called a Strunk and White for design. Tufte works by showing both outstanding and horrid graphics he’s found, improving upon the latter, and his principles take on the meditative quality of Zen koans: To clarify, add detail. And: Clutter is a failure of design, not an attribute of information.

"The Minister of Information" - New York magazine, June 10, 2007

Comments

  1. I first heard (and read) Tufte in the 80's, too. "People dismiss statistics as a lot of dull numbers," he said. "If the numbers are dull, you've got the wrong numbers."
    He told the story of how he shopped the manuscript of "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" around to the A-list university presses, and they all passed. So he got a second mortgage, published it himself, and it made a million dollars. "Don't assume if you publish your own book, you'll make a million," said Tufte. "The reason this book made a million dollars is that it's a very good book."

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I want to be Jorge Camoes when I grow up.

Portuguese infoviz enthusiast Jorge Camoes has spent the last year and a half writing informed, insightful blog posts on the field, complete with examples and citations. To his credit, he approaches everything -- even the revered work of Edward Tufte and Stephen Few -- with loving skepticism. I'm gratified, too, that he seems to agree with me on one central point: Snazzy tools alone don't get you good data visualization. It all comes down to putting serious thought into the project before you plot the first data point. In future posts we'll discuss more of Jorge's ideas. Bem feito, o Sr. Camoes!

Everybody loves visual information — especially Abraham Lincoln.

Infographics are clearly having a cultural moment. They have become pervasive in newspapers, magazines, blog posts, and viral tweets; they appear on television and in advertising, in political campaigns and at art openings. As a Google search term, “infographic” has increased nearly twenty-fold in the last five years. Yet infographics have been popular, in one form or another, for centuries. The source of their power isn’t computers or the Internet, but the brain’s natural visual intelligence. Gareth Cook , the editor of Best American Infographics 2013 , has put together a short but true summary of the history of information graphics. (Many of you who see this blog may know most of it already.) His striking lede recounts how much Abraham Lincoln valued his "slave map," shown above. Lincoln's reliance on the shades of gray throughout the Confederacy made an enormous difference in his Civil War decision-making. Fortunately it's rare that most people have to make l

Listing information design's most pressing issues

At his blog, Michael Babwahsingh says a number of smart things about the current status and ultimate value of information design. Number 8 is an excellent sample of his sensible macro approach: 8. Commercialization For several years now, the infoviz/dataviz trend has become infused in popular culture; the influence of the information design aesthetic is everywhere, from movie sequences to music videos to  art exhibits . Although the intent is often  tongue-in-cheek , and may even indirectly promote information design, there is still a risk of diluting, muddling, or flat-out mocking a field that has yet to really define and take ownership of itself. News features and special issues on information design are becoming more common, particularly in the graphic design world, but the tendency is towards visual appeal and surface-level scans over deep investigation (examples include Grafik magazine’s April 2010 issue,  Eye Magazine’s Winter 2010 issue , and Fast Company’s  Co.Design  blog