I am a big fan of Edward R. Tufte who is hailed as one of the world’s leading analysts of graphic information. I’ve seen his lecture in person and it is worth attending. I own all four of his hard-cover books and have read the first three—the last is the next read on my list:
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- Envisioning Information
- Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
- Beautiful Evidence
The books are certainly worth owning and reading if you are involved in using graphics as a way of communicating.
I bring up Tufte in relation to the post I came across today on another blog at Adaptive Path. The post has a link to something called the Periodic Table of Visualization.
This is a great resource if only for the wide variety of ways in which information can be visualized. This post, the reference, and the chart made me think of Tufte and the principles he promotes. Some of the examples that pop-up when you hover definitely could use some help with a Tuftean touch. One could classify some as “chart junk” but if one can put your Tuftean principles aside the collection has value.
I have added this page to my bookmarks on del.icio.us for the next time I find myself in a visualization dilemma.
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