I suppose I’ll just take a quote from Tufte himself:
“Muting these secondary elements will often reduce visual clutter – and thus help to clarify the primary information. Minimal contrasts of the secondary elements (figure) relative to the negative space (ground) will tend to produce a visual hierarchy, with layers of inactive background, calm secondary structure, and notable content. And conversely, when everything (background, structure, content) is emphasized, nothing is emphasized; the design will often be noisy, cluttered, and informationally flat.” (Page 74)
If only Tufte had applied this to his own book. I found this book to be so frustrating to read. It was really, extremely frustrating. It was cluttered, a visual assault that was over-stimulating, distracting and nearly impossible for me to read. The graphics, the footnotes, the flaps that lift up, it was overwhelming.
For a book that was about presenting information and the proper use of visuals, I find it bizarre that the author employed such an insanely chaotic layout. I had such a difficult time focusing on the information because my eye kept getting pulled to the images, and then to the footnotes, which weren’t really presented as footnotes, but almost as another graphic next to the text. There was no visual hierarchy in his book. Everything was on the same plane on the pages, and it made it very hard for me to get through an entire page at a time. I had to set myself little goals during the reading (“Just finish this paragraph, don’t let your eye wander – you can do – hey look at those cubes over there…dammit!”) I have never had such an experience reading a book where I had to so frequently remind myself to read the text.
The information I was able to pull from the book was helpful in pointing out the importance of how information is presented, but wow, it would have been nice if it wasn’t so painful to read. I realize I may be alone in this struggle, but my eyes tend to be drawn to images when I read, and there was just too much going on most of the pages for me.
On to the readings and site visits I did like:
From “The Non-Designer’s Web Book,” chapter nine, what made the biggest impact on me was the difference between print color and web color.
I found David Shea’s Photographic Palette to be straightforward with helpful hints such as how
to achieve shadow and highlight. Ideabook, Tip Sheet: Color Strategy was helpful in reminding that neutral colors help
emphasize the content of your site of the design. This is also emphasized in
Luke Wroblewski’s Natural Selections: Colors in Nature, as he states the importance of “having a palette that
does not fight for the user’s attention.” On the Compendium of Color Tools, I
found the Color Blend tool more useful than the Easy RGB tool, since you the
Color Blend doesn’t require you to know the numbers for the shades. I will definitely be revisiting ColorSchemer. Overall,
I think this week’s readings and visits were helpful in explaining some of the
basics of how to relate information through color and visuals.
