Summary: Not a text book but a knowledgeable friend
Comment: Visual Explanations is not a usual book. It is like a knowledgeable friend walking with you through a museum: pointing out good design and bad ideas; linking various domains (graphic design, usability, psychology) together. You learn things slowly, almost by symbiosis. Visual Explanations will be enchanting for people who have the time to read it in that way. It will be frustrating for people looking for a practical guide: This is not a textbook. The book itself is beautifully produced.
Topics covered include: clarity and purpose of information, color scheme choice, and composition of images.
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Summary: A must-read for anybody with something to tell
Comment: In this book, an expert of visual explanations uses visual explanations to tell us his ideas how to use visual cues to explain concepts, quantities, timelines etc. Tufte, with his eternal self-confidence and succinct prose gives good examples and shows how a good image can be better; gives bad examples and has no hesitation to call something (even authorities' products) 'ghastly' or 'nightmare'. I think this book is a must for anybody who wants to use visual cues and examples for the ideas they want to convey. That is, everybody, in this time and age of information.
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Summary: Explaining Quality Visual Information
Comment: Edward Tufte's book "Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative" is a 157 page exercise in critical thinking. The author discusses and analyzes visual information, pointing out flaws and strengths of various visual depictions. One becomes more aware of visual information and what constitutes ideal pictorial information.
"Visual Explanations" covers the topics of images and quantities, displaying evidence, pictorial instructions and disinformation, the smallest visual effective difference, repetition and change, multiples, and visual confections. Although the book has little to do with charts and graphs, reading the book makes one aware of all visual information and its ideal presentation. Anyone that works with or uses charts, illustrations, and any visual data will probably find this book useful. The book is richly illustrated with examples.
This book would be great for people that use statistics in their work or make presentations. It teaches people to be a critical thinkers concerning visual information and presentation. Even if you do not agree with Tufte, "Visual Explanations" will make you think about things you otherwise might not have.
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Summary: Learn how human information capacity affects your designs
Comment: An amazing book! While I'm not sure that it's worth giving up shelf space for, it's more than worth borrowing from your local library and reading.
The biggest things I pulled out of this were around information density and the capacities that humans have. This book provided me with a framework for looking at mediums of display to the user and to better understand how I can choose how much data and how to present it to best allow them to reason around it.
The examples are also beautifully produced and masterfully composed. The book itself is an amazing artifact!
Near the end, he talks about 'confections' and, while it was an interesting section, it was the one section of the book that it was difficult to pull out prescriptive guidance from.
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Summary: Indispensable and Revealing Insights
Comment: Edward R. Tufte again raises the bar both on his scholarly treatment of how we portray visual information and on how books of value ought to me made.
His third book on information design, Visual Explanation: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative is, in his words, "about pictures of verbs, the representation of mechanism and motion, process and dynamics, causes and effects, explanation and narrative."
Within this book, Mr. Tufte first tackles tough, fundamental issues related to quantity, scale, and magnitude. Determining if a visual representation is honest or accurate may, at first, not seem a vital skill, but Mr. Tufte clearly shows how data and information can be distorted or manipulated and offers sharp observations to help one see more clearly what is presented.
He addresses methods of presenting and analyzing data, using the now classic medical investigative work of John Snow and the fatal flawed decision making that resulting in the Challenger tragedy, to build a steady, compelling argument that there are right and wrong ways to show data.
A chapter on magic and designing disinformation is full of anecdotes, examples, and illustrations about the how's and why's of masking content and diverting attention.
Perhaps my favorite chapter is The Smallest Effective Difference, a challenging but insightful primer on using subtle but effective visual distinctions to create compelling visual information.
The long chapter about visual parallelism treats a complex subject by offering a plethora of examples, all explained with a terse elegance. Students of typography will take a special interest in Mr. Tufte's treatment of letterforms.
How we use and react to multiple images and how to effectively use multiples to evoke repetition, change, pattern, and surprise form the basis of the next chapter. Mr. Tufte again reminds readers that good design must take into account how, when, and even where information will be used.
The final chapter covers what Mr. Tufte has termed visual confections, that is an assembly of myriad visual events to convey a story, make comparisons, merge the real and imaginary. Digital artists should switch off their Macintosh computers until they have studied carefully this chapter, replete with superb illustrations and laser-intense commentary.
Mr. Tufte self-publishes his books because no commercial press would indulge his demands for perfection. His books are wonderful not just because of the information he presents but also because they represent the craft of bookmaking. The printing, binding, the acid-free paper, inks, the arrangement of words and images---these books are to treasure when so much is disposable and fleeting.
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