Envisioning Information

A very beautiful book, an elegant presentation of lessons in the layout of graphical and textual information. Anyone who is doing presentation of complex information, particularly people aiming for visual style on Web pages, should read this book. I was disappointed at first that the book isn't a manual for graphic design, but once I realized that wasn't Tufte's goal that was ok. Instead, Tufte points out interesting examples, showing what works and what doesn't. I really like his phrase "information prison" to refer to a presentation that has too many heavy grid lines. I was also impressed with how beautiful the book itself is, high quality heavy paper, excellent illustrations, nice font (Bembo), excellent layout of tables. I guess one would expect that for a book on graphic design, but still quite a pleasure.
I've also flipped through Tufte's earlier book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It's got much the same feel as Envisioning Information, examples and analysis of examples of graphical design. Quantitative Information, though, is only about presenting numerical data, a peculiar focus that shows that data doesn't have to be boring. Also fun reading.

Reading this book, and looking at a few web pages that actually look good, have made me think about casting off the restraints of proper, boring HTML 2.0 to do some pages that look spiffy. Danger! I wish Tufte would write something about display on low bandwidth devices: computer screens, web pages. The most beautiful examples presented in his books require very high resolution display. Fine for paper, but not clear how to apply these lessons to on-screen design.