A metaphor for good information design is a map. Hold any diagram against a map and see how it compares.
Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose.
We’ve drifted into this presentation mode without realizing the cost to the content and the audience in the process.
The goal is to provide analytical tools that will last students a lifetime.
The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly – to develop strategies of seeing and showing.
Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information.
It is not how much empty space there is, but rather how it is used. It is not how much information there is, but rather how effectively it is arranged.
A practical part of my teaching is to provide demonstrative, hands-on experiences.
A curious consequence is that I have become a minor celebrity.
I think it is important for software to avoiding imposing a cognitive style on workers and their work.
Here’s the general theory: To clarify, add detail. Imagine that. To clarify, add detail. And clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don’t start throwing out information, instead fix the design.
PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play – very loud, very slow, and very simple.
I was writing a chapter of Beautiful Evidence on the subject of the sculptural pedestal, which led to my thinking about what’s up on the pedestal – the great leader.
My idea here is that, inasmuch as certain cognitive tasks and principles are tied to nature’s laws, these tasks and principles are indifferent to language, culture, gender, or the particular mode of information that is provided.
It is straightforward for me to be ethical, responsible, and kind-hearted because I have the resources to support that.
My father worked for governments all his life as an engineer and public works director.
PowerPoint is like being trapped in the style of early Egyptian flatland cartoons rather than using the more effective tools of Renaissance visual representation.
I hope that I am generous and tolerant, but certainly on the intellectual side I think that there are discoverable truths, and some things that are closer approximations to the truth than others.
Above all else show the data.
Science and art have in common intense seeing, the wide-eyed observing that generates empirical information.
Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.