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Edward Tufte

Envisioning The Visual Display of Information Quantitative Information

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

Escaping the Flat land


The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?

Layering & Separation


If one limits strong, heavy, rich, and solid colors to the small areas of extremes, then expresive and beautiful colored area patterns occur...Larve area background or base-colors do their work most quietly, allowing the smaller, bright areas to stand out most vividly...

Eduard Imhof, Cartographic Relief Presentation, edited and translated by H.J. Steward.

Micro/Macro Readings
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

The Isometric Map of Midtown Manhattan

Small Multiples
Comparisons must be enforced within the scope of the eyespan

Color and Information


Grey is regarded in painting to be one of the prettiest, most important and most versatile of colors. Strongly muted colors mixed with grey, provide the best background for the colored theme. This Philosophy applies equally to map design.

The complex nature of the earths surface leads to enclosed colored areas, allover maps. They are the islabds in the sea, the lakes on continents, lowlands, highlands, etc., which often appears in thematic maps, and provide a desireable amount of disaggregation, interpretation, and reiteration within the image- EDUARD IMHOF

Multifunctioning Graphical Elements

Graphical Excellence

A complete yearlong life cycle of the Popillia japonica Newman (the Japanese Beetle) L. Hugh Newman, Man and Insects (London, 1965), pp. 104105. Cited by Edward R. Tufte, (1991) p.110

High-Resolution Data Graphics

Jorge J. Yunis and Om Prakash, The Origin of Man: A Chromosomal Pictorial Legacy , Sience, 215 (March 19, 1982), 1527.

Chartjunk

Big Duck, Flanders, New York; photography by Edward Tufte, July 2000.

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