The Visual Field
One of my early jobs was as a web developer in a Wall Street Bank. My manager in that role was an amazing mentor from whom I learned so…
One of my early jobs was as a web developer in a Wall Street Bank. My manager in that role was an amazing mentor from whom I learned so much. That person is David Macfarlane, known to everybody as DMac. Hi DMac! 👋
David’s a renaissance figure, and our time working together he influenced the expansion of my creative interests beyond the command line. David made many important contributions to my professional development. One of the most meaningful was turning me on to Edward Tufte and his now-famous books.
The first in Tufte’s series, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, should be required reading for graphic and UX designers, product managers, data analysts/scientists, and almost anybody else working on digital products. With a critical fine eye and a surgeon’s delicate touch, Tufte disassembles the practice of representing data on the page or screen.
The emphasis is on clarity, truth, and simplicity. Beautifully illustrated and meticulously soured, each book is a compendium of visual examples that cut across almost every field of human endeavor. These are vital textbooks you can read every night before bed. Once finished, they’ll live out their days as conversation starters on your coffee table.
From Tufte I developed a lifelong aversion to “chartjunk” or needless illustrative elements like gridlines that embellish charts, graphs, diagrams, and other visual artifacts. And my eye is now trained to the way that charts can manipulate data to tell an untrue or imprecise story, sometimes intentionally, but oftentimes not.
There are now five books in this series which delve with more nuance into the topics of the first book. The latest, Seeing with Fresh Eyes, which was published in 2020. Tufte’s daylong courses are also famous, and I was fortunate enough to take one back in the ‘aughts. Those were the best professional development dollars I’ve ever spent. Thanks David!
I’ve been sending people links to these books and the course schedule for 20 years. You should own them, and take the training tool. The in-personal courses seem to now have been replaced by online courses. If anyone has taken them, please let me know how it went.