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Note: A just slightly different
version of this review has been published in Information
Design Journal 15(2), 2007 (pp. 190-193, available here). A review of Edward Tufte’s ‘Beautiful Evidence’ Information design as a
field owes a lot to Edward Tufte. With his bestselling books The Visual Display
of Quantitative Information (1983), Envisioning
Information (1990), and Visual Explanations (1997), Tufte has successfully been drawing the attention of
countless people to issues of information design. |
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Tufte
has provided the discipline with a vocabulary for bad design (chartjunk, the lie factor), for
particular graphic constructions (small multiples, micro/macro readings), and for his own criteria of good design (high data-ink
ratio, high data density). His fourth book on the subject is titled Beautiful Evidence (2006, abbreviated below as BE). In this review I will, after some general observations, make
some brief remarks about each of the nine chapters, and then conclude with
two aspects of the book about which I have critical comments. (Update: Stephen Few has made a few observations about Beautiful
Evidence that are quite
similar to the ones that I making here - see his review online, or download it
as a pdf, 250 kb.) Beautiful Evidence fulfills
the expectations of yet another superbly crafted showcase of interesting
visuals. Tufte continues to practice what he preaches about visual design. To
name just one little layout detail: the reader never has to turn a page to
finish reading a sentence (with one exception on p. 37). In the process of writing and editing this book, Tufte made use
of the Internet: he posted the drafts of three of the first four chapters on
his website (Ask
E.T.), inviting comments. Many visitors reacted, posting corrections
and suggestions (see, for example, the discussion of the draft for the
chapter on links
and causal arrows). My impression is that this has contributed to the ripening of
these chapters, and I believe that the last four chapters could have
benefited from the same feedback procedure (see below, in my remarks about
the chapters). Diversity of chapters In the first chapter, titled “Mapped pictures”, Tufte discusses pictures of physical things. He advocates the
mapping of pictures, which is his
term for visually annotating pictures with scales of measurement, labels,
relevant comparisons, and explanatory diagrams that are placed next to, or
are overlaid on the pictures. He illustrates this with
numerous interesting examples, and notes that for many presentations, “it
will be useful to show viewers both the unmapped and the mapped images” (BE, p. 45). The second chapter is devoted to Tufte’s intriguing concept of sparklines. He also refers to sparklines
as “wordlike graphics” or “datawords”. A sparkline
usually consists of either a fluctuating line like in a line chart, or of a
string of very tiny bars. It is usually longer than high, and is not
accompanied by an x- or y-axis or other scale. A sparkline enables the visual
display of a large amount of data in a tiny space. In addition, sparklines
are often presented in a set, enabling comparisons between the data in
different sparklines. Tufte presents interesting examples of sparkline uses,
and provides practical advice for their design (some draft pages for
this chapter can be seen here). In his third chapter Tufte points out that the various arrows or
linking lines within a diagram are often all identical to each other visually
and ambiguous in their meaning. He recommends that “arrows, links, and
other connectors should become more articulate, more differentiated, less
generic.” (BE, p. 70). Appealing examples of careful annotations of
connectors, and of rich visual vocabularies of links or arrows in diagrams
are presented (some draft pages for this chapter can be
seen here). In the next chapter, Tufte advocates the practice of tightly
integrating text and images, in close adjacency within
the same visual field, weaving them into meaningful relationships with each
other. As examples of good practice in this respect, Tufte shows us
manuscripts by da Vinci, Galileo, Newton and others. Bad examples are books
in which all images are banned to a separate appendix at the end of the book.
“The fundamental principles
of analytical design” is the title of the fifth chapter of Beautiful
Evidence. Here Tufte provides an
in-depth analysis of the by now well-known graphic showing the devastating
losses of the French Army in Napoleon’s Russian campaign (drawn by Charles
Joseph Minard). |
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This graphic was basically unknown
before Tufte introduced it to the world in his book The visual display of
quantitative information (1983). Now, twenty-six years later, he
uses it again to illustrate and explain in detail his six fundamental
principles of analytical design, which he formulates as: 1)
Show
comparisons, contrasts, differences. 2)
Show
causality, mechanism, explanation, systematic structure. 3)
Show
multivariate data; that is, show more than 1 or 2 variables. 4)
Completely
integrate words, numbers, images, diagrams. 5)
Thoroughly
describe the evidence. Provide a detailed title, indicate the authors and
sponsors, document the data sources, show complete measurement scales, point
out relevant issues. 6)
Analytical
presentations ultimately stand or fall depending on the quality, relevance,
and integrity of their content. Tufte declares that “The
purpose of an evidence presentation is to assist thinking”, and that these
six principles of analytical design “are derived from the principles of
analytical thinking.” (BE, p. 137). He claims that these
design principles are universal and “not tied to any particular language,
culture, style, century, gender, or technology of information display.” (BE, p. 10). This last claim
may be disputable, but I certainly appreciate both this “Napoleon-chapter”
and the sparkline-chapter as logical and useful continuations of Tufte’s
highly regarded work. Chapter six, “Corruption in
evidence presentations”, consists of a collection of Tufte’s critical
thoughts on topics such as mediation and marketing of evidence,
“bureaucracies of secondary presentation”, problems of vague formulations in
texts, and the use of punning instead of good statistics. Little in this
chapter is concerned directly with issues of visual presentation (some draft
pages for this chapter can be seen here). In the following chapter
Tufte attacks PowerPoint, talking for example about “the
weakness of bullet outlines for thinking about causality” (BE, p. 170). Most of this
chapter has already been published by Tufte in 2003, as a separate pamphlet
with the same title: The cognitive style of PowerPoint: Pitching out
corrupts within. In the same year Tufte
published an article in Wired Magazine, titled “PowerPoint Is Evil”. Three years later, in Beautiful
Evidence, Tufte’s assault on PowerPoint remains the same, while in the
meantime it has been triggering various quite critical reactions. For
example, cognitive psychologist Donald Norman, author of books such as The
design of everyday things and Emotional design, responded to Tufte’s
pamphlet with an essay titled In
defense of PowerPoint. Reacting to Tufte’s denunciation of PowerPoint, Norman writes,
“I respectfully submit that all of this is nonsense.” According to Donald
Norman, Tufte fails to distinguish between the needs of the audience at an
oral presentation and the needs of readers of printed documents. As David Farkas
writes, “Probably the biggest problem in Tufte’s […] commentary is that he
argues as though slides were free-standing graphics without any connection to
a presentation” (David Farkas in “Toward a better understanding of PowerPoint
deck design”, Information Design Journal 14(2), full text available here). Tufte offers a fierce and
detailed critique of a key NASA PowerPoint slide that presented the
(underestimated) risk of damage of the space shuttle Columbia, before the
Columbia burnt up during atmosphere reentry, killing the seven astronauts on
board. Tufte seems to blame PowerPoint. Donald Norman disagrees: “I differ
most strongly with this assessment. Yes, the slide is very bad. Yes, it is
almost incomprehensible. But in my opinion, the slide should have less
information on it - Tufte wants more information” (Donald Norman, In defense of PowerPoint). Jumping from PowerPoint to sculptures, Tufte presents his final
chapter, “Sculptural pedestals: Meaning, Practice, Depedestalization”. Here
Tufte’s plea is to minimize the pedestals (often blocks of concrete) on which
sculptures are placed. He writes: “Representing the physical and symbolic
transition from ground-flatland to sculpture-spaceland, the intersection of
land and sculpture announces the beginning of art.” (BE, p. 187). A two-page
interview is included with someone who used to pull down and smash statues of
the Shah of Iran, leaving behind empty pedestals (BE, pp. 190-191). I have to
admit that I find it difficult to see the coherence here, both within this chapter
and in relation to the other chapters. The last fourteen pages of
the book are filled with double spread photographs of Tufte’s own
landscape sculptures. These are indeed without pedestals, but also without any
explanatory text. (Update: In the second printing of the book, in May 2007,
Tufte has added an introduction to his sculpture photographs.) You can see
Tufte’s sculptures the sculpture section of his website, and also in
this
illustrated article in Stanford Magazine. Running
out of focus? Starting with his first book on the visual display of
information in 1983, Tufte has been enriching the vocabulary of information
design with his influential concepts. In Beautiful Evidence he adds the valuable concept
of “sparklines” to the list. However, while The Visual Display of
Quantitative Information (1983) and Envisioning
Information (1990) are undisputed classics and required reading for
everyone seriously interested in information design, Visual Explanations (1997) and Beautiful
Evidence (2006) both appear less focused. My general impression is that
the first part of Beautiful Evidence - chapters 1 through 5 (pp.
1-139) - will be of more use to readers interested in information design than
the second part of the book - chapters 6 through 9 (pp. 140-209). |
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I may have been spoiled by the careful and logical development of Tufte’s arguments in his first two books on the subject. In comparison, Beautiful
Evidence comes across as a collection of sometimes only loosely related
essays, occasionally straying into discussions of painting (works by Cézanne,
Matisse, Picasso, and others are discussed), sculpture, bureaucracy, language
use, and other issues. Concerning Tufte’s well-known focus - the visual
display of information - it seems that in Beautiful Evidence, he is, at times, running
out of focus. Coincidently, the book’s dust jacket design - the significance
of which is not explained - consists of four photographs of a dog running,
out of focus. Tufte’s
rhetoric A second slight
disappointment that I experienced reading Beautiful Evidence relates to the style of
argumentation in some sections. As Tufte points out, “blatant rhetorical
ploys” suggest “that the presenter lacks both credibility and
evidence.” (BE, p. 141). However, Tufte makes
abundant use of “blatant rhetorical ploys” himself. For example, to support
his claim that his design principles are universal across cultures, he points
out that the illustrations in Beautiful Evidence come from “16 countries
(Italy and France, especially), 3 planets, and the innumerable stars” (BE, p. 10), as if these
drawings of planets and stars (mostly by Galileo) have been designed by
creatures from extra-terrestrial cultures (who are using those same universal
design principles as we humans do). Here Tufte conflates diversity of objects
of visualizations with diversity of (cultural backgrounds of) designers
of visualizations. Regarding the low information density of many PowerPoint slides, Tufte writes: “The resolution of printed-out slide decks is remarkably low, approaching dementia.” (BE, p. 180). Next to a number of screenshots with PowerPoint templates, he shows a brief excerpt from a children’s book “I want my ball. My ball is yellow. It is a big, pretty ball.” (BE, p. 177). He makes a comparison between PowerPoint’s cognitive style and “Stalin-cult propaganda” with “orderly followers feigning attention”, and he illustrates this comparison with a photograph of a military parade in front of a statue of Stalin who is commanding: “Next slide, please” (BE, p. 185). |
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I have always been, and still am, a great fan of Edward Tufte’s
work, and I feel almost a bit embarrassed about some of the sections of Beautiful
Evidence from which I have quoted
above. Abducting Tufte’s own words to express this feeling of embarrassment,
“few things are more appalling than listening to inept and specious arguments
made by one’s allies.” (BE, p. 141). Yuri Engelhardt, November
2007 |