{"id":1522,"date":"2010-03-21T00:03:35","date_gmt":"2010-03-21T05:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=1522"},"modified":"2010-03-21T00:03:35","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T05:03:35","slug":"edward-tuftes-presenting-data-and-information-seminar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=1522","title":{"rendered":"Edward Tufte\u2019s Presenting Data and Information Seminar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I went to the March 18 Edward Tufte seminar on \u201cPresenting Data and Information\u201d in New York. He tours around doing these one-day courses occasionally.\u00a0 This latest tour continues into Pittsburgh (April 9) and Arlington, VA (April 12,13, and 14.)<\/p>\n

Edward Tufte <\/a>wrote and self-published four ridiculously beautiful books on information design: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information<\/em> (the first and probably most famous one), Visual Explanations<\/em>, Envisioning Information<\/em>, and Beautiful Evidence<\/em>. He\u2019s also a sculptor and does a million other things. He was recently appointed by Obama to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act\u2019s Recovery Independent Advisory Panel and he spoke at the seminar about working on the design for the forthcoming website where you can see how the Recovery Act is using its funds.<\/p>\n

What does this have to do with cartooning? Well, his books are primarily about presenting visual evidence as truthfully and clearly as possible.\u00a0He told me that his two latest books, Envisioning Information<\/em> and Beautiful Evidence<\/em>, are the most relevant to cartoonists. Besides that, if you\u2019re just into incredible books or self-publishing they\u2019re definitely worth looking into.\u00a0 He writes in\u00a0the introduction to Beautiful Evidence<\/em>:<\/p>\n

My books are self-exemplifying: the objects themselves embody the ideas written about.\u00a0This has come about, in part, because my work is blessedly free of clients, patronage, or employers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the seminar they give you a box with all four of his books and a pamphlet about his sculpture works. I don\u2019t know who the majority of the people there were, but I suspect they were mostly business people who have to give a lot of presentations. There was a lot of talk (and jokes) about PowerPoint, which Tufte hates and said should be used only as a projector. But I got a lot out of it.<\/p>\n

Here were some of the repeating themes:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Prespecifying a mode is a trap.<\/strong> Use whatever it takes. A lot of the examples in Tufte\u2019s books use different modes- arrows, graphs, charts, whatever, to communicate what it needs to communicate. Don\u2019t pick the data display mode in advance. If you decide HOW you\u2019re going to display something before WHAT you need to display accurately, it (obviously) causes problems. You have the content first and then you think: what\u2019s the best way to display\/explain the content? Answer: Whatever it takes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The content doesn\u2019t care what the mode is.<\/strong> The evidence doesn\u2019t care. The mind doesn\u2019t care. The goal should be to maximize content and minimize format. There shouldn\u2019t be any puzzling about the form. It shouldn\u2019t be about the form. He said something like (I\u2019m paraphrasing from memory) \u201cIt\u2019s unsettling that saying \u2018content is king\u2019 today is an insight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clutter and confusion is a problem with the design, not a problem with the information.<\/strong> He talked a lot about this map of Napoleon\u2019s Russian campaign of 1812. This displays so much different information accurately and clearly. You can do a lot.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What is the strongest visual activity?<\/strong> Is it an accident, or is it content? Oftentimes people put boxes around things in charts, and that activates the space around the boxes, and so the strongest visual activity is what? Competing boxes. Just get rid of the boxes and let the words float. It\u2019s not about boxes.<\/p>\n

If you think too much about your audience, you\u2019ll usually end up underestimating them.<\/strong> Have people suddenly gotten stupid looking at your work? Think about how successfully people sort through a million things (he gave examples like Google News<\/a>, or the New York Times<\/em> sports page) every day.<\/p>\n

He also talked a lot about older books- like ninth century manuscripts, Durer, Galileo- and how words and images were more integrated before the printing presses divided the systems used to print text and pictures. He compared this to computer programs that divide tasks (like, you go to Word to write and Paint to draw- and compile everything together later if you can figure it out) instead of an ideal program where you could create something and all of the options were integrated. He showed this page by Galileo explaining how the rings of Saturn look: (how he just drew in the middle of the text to explain the rings- \u201cwhatever it takes\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Galileo made engravings of the moon because the other option (woodcuts) would draw too much attention to the form- rather than the information (woodcuts have a distinctive look that draws attention to itself-it looks woodcut-y.) Also he\u2019d place the moon images on facing pages of a book so that they can easily be compared, rather than on a page-turn which requires memory and is \u201ctemporal\u201d (like film, or slides.) Print allows information to be adjacent in space and is of a higher resolution than slides or a computer screen.<\/p>\n

Comics, to me, is a lot more than just information presentation. Sometimes a cartoonist is expressing confusion itself, or a mood or atmosphere- things that aren\u2019t supposed to be entirely clear. Or maybe it isn\u2019t clear to the cartoonist and they\u2019re thinking about something on the page, recording contradictory thoughts. Anyway, I enjoyed\u00a0the whole presentation.<\/p>\n

To tie this into Comics Comics<\/em> a bit more, here\u2019s a predecessor to Frank\u2019s tree sketch<\/a>, by Ad Reinhardt <\/a>in 1946- reprinted by Tufte\u00a0in Beautiful Evidence<\/em>–\u00a0which is a reaction to a 1936 MoMA graph called \u201cCubism and Abstract Art\u201d by Alfred H. Barr Jr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to the March 18 Edward Tufte seminar on \u201cPresenting Data and Information\u201d in New York. He tours around doing these one-day courses occasionally.\u00a0 This latest tour continues into Pittsburgh (April 9) and Arlington, VA (April 12,13, and 14.) Edward Tufte wrote and self-published four ridiculously beautiful books on information design: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (the first and probably most famous one), Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[399,519],"class_list":["post-1522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-edward-tufte","tag-graphic-design"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}