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Edward Tufte Talks information Design

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the good-design dept.

BoredStiff writes "The Weekend Edition of NPR ran a story on Edward Tufte — the outspoken critic of PowerPoint presentations — he has been described by The New York Times as "The Leonardo da Vinci of Data." Since 1993, thousands have attended his day-long seminars on Information Design. Tufte's most recent book is filled with hundreds of illustrations that demonstrate one concept: good design is timeless, while bad design can be a matter of life and death."

2 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. more useful than the article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Edward Tufte's site.

  2. Re:Hmm.... by BWJones · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, I *am* saying that I used a presentation software package, yet in using that package, I kept the "chartjunk" to a minimum, used graphics effectively where appropriate and used simple data and clear presentation to deliver the message.

    This can be done with Powerpoint, Keynote and a variety of other packages. However, the problem with them is that people often use things like 3D graphs where inappropriate, fill up screens with lots of little text whereupon they say "don't read this, I just wanted to show......". Also the distracting use of transitions that flip and pop and such and cute little sounds that do nothing for the message except cloud it are common things that folks like Tufte and interestingly enough David Byrne have also commented on.

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