Getting inside design

By Dan Wilchins

Edward Tufte, GRD '68, is a professor of political science at Yale, but he is best known for writing, designing, and publishing three slim books that dot bookshelves and coffee tables across the nation. The three books are currently on the 100 top titles list at the online bookseller Amazon.com; they have revolutionized the field of design, and have turned Tufte into a multi-millionaire.

The books—The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations—are discourses on information design, the art and science of conveying information graphically. Tufte draws a sharp distinction between information design and graphic design. He said, "Graphic Design is meant to be viewed at a distance: posters, logos, billboards. Information design is meant to be viewed close up, like a graph or a table." Information design is meant to be transparent; it should not call attention to itself. According to Tufte, "One test [of the quality of information design] is whether someone looking at, say, a graph, first notices the data or the design. If they notice the data, that's good [information] design."

'Chartjunk' or Clarification?

Tufte believes that graphics should be rich in information; he wrote in Envisioning Information that "the deepest reason for displays that portray complexity and intricacy is that the worlds we seek to understand are complex and intricate." He criticizes visual displays that do not have sufficient information in them. "Thin data," he wrote in Envisioning Information, "rightly prompts suspicions: 'What are they leaving out? Is that really everything they know? What are they hiding? Is that all they did?'" Data are not complicated and cluttered, according to Tufte; only bad design makes them seem that way.

Tufte does not mince words when it comes to graphics that do not have enough information. In Envisioning Information he refers to such charts as "chartjunk," and adds, "Lurking behind chartjunk is contempt for both information and audience."

Nigel Holmes is an independent information designer who formerly worked for Time for 16 years. One of his graphics appears in Envisioning Information as an example of chartjunk. Although Holmes asserts that this graphic is not representative of his work, he does believe that simplifying data and using striking graphic design can serve readers well. "People need things clarified," Holmes said. "I try to explain things to people, but not in a form that they are going to ponder for a long time, because [a graphic] is in a daily, or a weekly, or a monthly. I also believe in the power of a picture to draw people into an article.... I think sometimes information can look too dense, and people can be turned off by it." Holmes concedes that he may have gone a little over the top in dressing up data when working for Time: "I'm now trying to find the middle ground between the two extremes," he said. Holmes also added that Tufte's books "are beautiful books." But he still has concerns that Tufte's notions of information design "are making graphics drier."

When asked about such criticism, Tufte sniffed, "Let's skip that question."

Holmes believes that the current fashion in information design is toward copying a Tuftean look—austere, quiet, and serious. However, Bonnie Scranton, MFA '92, who is currently Information Graphics Director at Newsweek, believes that designers are not merely copying Tufte's look, but are also subscribing to his principles. Scranton, who has studied and worked with Tufte, said, "His ideas are the right ideas." But applying these principles in a commercial environment can be difficult: "It's sometimes frustrating because it is often hard to find the data-rich information needed to create a beautiful graphic in the short timeframe we work with at the magazine. But something Tufte has taught us, and something we continually strive to do, is to let the design come out of the information and to keep the graphics as dense with information as possible."

Information Design in the Information Age

One group which has recently seized upon Tufte's ideas is techno-savvy professionals, people such as web designers and software engineers who are daily faced with the task of conveying information electronically. Richard Saul Wurman, a noted information architect, said, "I know a lot of people who read his books."

Tufte has a lot to say to web and user-interface designers. "A lot of web sites are too contraptionary, loaded down with buttons and logos," Tufte complained. "The most common activity for visitors to a site is fleeing the site, by clicking their back buttons or following a link."

COURTESY PHOTO.NET An image from the travel section of Photo.net

According to Tufte, high information density is crucial in designing a web site; there should be a lot information available to the user immediately. Among his favorite sites is Photo.net, a database of photographs and photography information. "It's so rich in content," he explained. "It doesn't fool around with [garish] design. You don't have to do a lot of burrowing to find what you're looking for. It's all there, and it's very cleanly designed." He similarly lauds Amazon.com for making so much information available to the user so easily.

A problem with too many websites, according to Tufte, is that they are built on the metaphor of a computer program; they use a series of questions to help steer a user where he or she wants to go. Suppose a user visits a corporate website. He or she might have to click on a graphic to enter the site, then a link to find out about company information, then a link to find out how to contact the company, and then a link to find out the name of the CEO of the corporation, the single piece of information the user initially sought. "People navigate on a site, which is like a tree," Tufte said, "and they might end up on a branch, or a limb, unsure of where to go to find what they are looking for."

COURTESY GOTTI.COM An image from the "Mob Myths and Links" section of Gotti.com, a pro-John Gotti website

Tufte prefers sites with a flatter architecture. Gotti.com, a pro-John Gotti website, exhibits this flatness. Tufte said, "You get a lot of choices on the opening screen, and then there are only one or two layers after that." (Tufte assured The Yale Herald that he is not a Gotti supporter, although he does enjoy the tongue-in-cheek tone of the site.)

So according to Tufte, the website should be driven by the content; the content should be neither hard to find nor overwhelmed by design elements. The same is true of operating systems. "The most important thing on a computer screen is space," Tufte said. "A screen doesn't have much space, so space is precious. An operating system often consumes space needlessly." He believes that elements such as windows and menubars take up too much space on the screen: "The operating system should be almost invisible," Tufte said. "The most important thing on a computer screen should be the document [with which the user deals]."

Deeper principles

Tufte's books may be popular among the digerati, but Tufte emphasizes the universality of his principles. "These principles apply to maps etched in stone six thousand years ago and websites," he said. "I'm working on deep principles of information design. They are free of culture and current technology."

Holmes characterized Tufte's books as "beautiful," and they are. They feature graphics, illustrations, and maps from a breathtaking array of sources—from Javanese railroad timetables to Paul Klee's notebooks to the frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan. "It would be nice if people couldn't tell what country my books are from by looking at the images," Tufte said. "There is a universality to the images just as there is a universality to the principles and words written about them."

"The big idea behind all my work," Tufte added, "is that design is content driven, and the principles of design are indifferent to the technology at play."

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