One of my issues with the internet is its deemphasis of a beginning. You can find all kinds of blogs and other resources that can teach you about a whole number of things, but it’s hard to find a starting point.

Books, on the other hand, have been used to teach us for centuries. They were made to sequentially build knowledge from page 1 to page n. Early entrepreneurs struggling to get going will serve themselves well to read books (and blogs too). In addition to all of the online resources I’ll refer to in this blog, I’ll also periodically post book reviews and recommendations. Here’s my first.

Edward Tufte’s Envisioning Information is a book almost everyone should read — that is, anyone who has ever looked at a graph, map, poster, schedule, manual, musical notation, monument, software application, or color palette, which is roughly ‘almost everyone’. It’s obviously not at all specific to web design but instead breaks down basic principles for understanding or creating any graphic information display

“It’s the way they draw these wretched tables.”

The book boils down to two themes. Without words, what are you trying to say and how should, or can, you say it? That statement’s a bit of a blunted version of his book, but if one remembers anything about this book those two themes should be it.

Tufte’s book is obviously a bit more detailed so to give you an idea of what’s inside, here’s a brief summary of the chapters:

• Escaping Flatland - Escaping Flatland is the central theme of the book. We live in a 3D world and (so far) we don’t have 3D information displays. What are we trying to display and how can we do it in 2D?
• Micro/Macro Readings - 2D displays are not only limited by a dimension, they’re also limited by area. How do you communicate a lot of information, with a little space, while still making details easy to find?
• Layering and Separation - One of my favorite sections, layering and separation focuses on identifying the different pieces of information that need to be displayed and how they can be distinguished from one another.
• Small Multiples - Graphical displays have to communicate range in time, blood flow, last week’s stock price. Comparing change is what makes data useful at all.
• Color and Information - Our eyes can only deal with so much. Using color appropriately helps save them from working too hard.
• Narratives of Space and Time - Combining space and time brings us back to the beginning. How do we recreate our world?

As hinted earlier, Tufte uses a variety of examples to communicate these themes. His design examples range in time from the Middles Ages to the software age. To illustrate the way we communicate time intervals, he uses a mix of planetary orbit paths, train schedules, and dance steps. Often, to emphasize his examples, he uses images with text in a variety of foreign languages where few, if any, of his readers will be able to understand them all. It requires you to read past the text and focus on his lessons.

Tufte’s book is just plain fun to read. His book makes well on its promise to employ good design. It’s constructed on a combination of well deployed white space, gray scale and color images, succinct explanations and useful side notes.

I’ll take away from this book an appreciation for information design in ways that are far more reaching than web design. It’s helped me better improve the way I read, understand, and am able to create any graphical display.

For anyone that’s looking for a place to start with any design, Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte is a great place to choose as your page 1. And, after that, he has a few other books..

Posted in Books, Design