Edward Tufte

Edwards Tufte a university professor has taught at Yale and Preston in America, using his background in statistics, graphic design, and political science.
His two books I looked at were “The visual Display of Quantitative information” and “Envisioning Information”. When I picked up his books from the library and glazed through them I thought oh god this totally bores me to death. but after reading articles on the internet about what his books are trying to do I then picked up his books with a fresh mind. I never thought for one minute that his work would influence my work.
The book that I found most useful was “Envisioning information” here I looked at chapters Escaping flat lines, layering and separation and Narratives and Space and Time
In the chapter escaping flat lines he looks at Yumi and Ikukyo, Colour coordination images.
There work is of 36 small shirts in a rectangle position in a different multicolour’s. He talks about how there multiplied smallness enforces you to locally compare with in your eyespan, relying on your active eye to select and make contrasts on them rather than memories of images scattered over a page. The first thing I did when I looked at these images of the t-shirts was to do this comparison. I was reading it like I would a written sentence in a book. This has brought to my attention how people read images. If the images were scattered over the page then the reader would not compare them. As they are placed closely together then in a rectangle shape it gives more impact and we compare the multicolour’s on the t-shirts.
Researching Edward Tuft has influence my work the most. I never would have thought that he would have because he seems too scientific. In the chapter escaping flat lines I have understood what he has discussed and used this technique in my work. I have clutter free images and have thought about where I should put them after reading this chapter. I have also most importantly only stuck to two colours which is mostly blue and a little orange. I have put the orange at the beginning and at the end of the narrative data display. This is to attract the eyespan to read the data and information differently. The eye will cross the page from right to left because the orange stands out.
Layering and separation. In this chapter he talks about how we can confuse things and clutter things in design, which is bad design. Confusion and clutter lead to the viewer’s lack of understand. Effective layering is difficult but how designers can over come this is by subtle design. His example of what layering and separation of what works is Uboku Nishitani, techniques of calligraphy. This is of Japanese lettering horizontally positioned down the page. The black Japanese lettering is bold and takes up most of the page, the red text is a lot smaller and compact and lays spaced perfectly to the top left and bottom left of the black text.
Edwards describes this as “by creating a distinctive layer, the red commentary maintain the, seniority and crisp precision side by side with a gesture and expressive black line in this marriage of colour and information”. What he is saying here is the colour balance and separation of text has been placed well together. The black text stands out while the red smaller text complements it and gives the viewer more information.
From this chapter I got inspiration to do my Thailand text big and bold and the English text small and compact but laid neatly next to it.
Narratives and Space and time. Edward looks at how Czechoslovakia Air Transport have made a brilliant example of how to record both time and spatial experiences. They have a complex network of routes, which is brought together by flight times and number identification. The graphic front cover makes it an exceptional combination of graphic and information design. They had so much information to get across to their audience and they manage to produce a simple graphic front cover with very demonstrative data and information that is easy to follow.
Envisioning Information book has opened up my mind. I now understand the importance of data and the way in which it should be displayed. I am now looking at maps and data so differently than I have done before. The empathies on his books are to demonstrate how graphic design and information presentation affects thinking, decision-making, and emotion.