thursday, december 10th, 2009
My day job was awesome enough to buy a seat for me and a few others at Edward Tufte's incredible lecture on the presentation of visual information. If you've never heard of the guy, do yourself a favor and check him out immediately. Some of his ideas may seem a little counter intuitive at first, but there's no doubt in my mind that he's a visionary and deserves to be studied by every designer working today (as well as a lot of non-designers).
As a lecturer, he's engaging, has a great sense of humor, and clearly knows his stuff backwards and forwards. Additionally, we were given copies of all four of his books, awesomely packaged in what looks like a big cardboard lunchbox with his trademark Gill Sans type all over it. Totally badass.
He also rather brazenly showed us his first edition copies of books like Galileo's The Starry Messenger and the first English translation of Euclid's The Elements of Geometry (!). It was inconceivable to me that he'd be waving around such priceless artifacts to make his points, but I found his explanation quite admirable: for the small price of a little wear and tear, he's been able to share these remarkable pieces of history with audiences that would likely never see them otherwise—over 200,000 in his estimation. This is a guy who clearly has a genuine passion not only for the subject itself, but for the act of sharing it.
Anyway, the real value of Tufte's work lies in how directly and aggressively it challenges a designer's notion of visual information and the way it's displayed. I can't say I'm entirely convinced [yet] by all of his ideas, but I'm on board with the vast majority and even find those few questionable details intriguing in their own right.
He has the ability to strip an idea down to such a raw state that seeing it is almost exhilarating; it's so fresh and unique that it's like rediscovering design all over again. I've never been so engaged by something that really doesn't amount to much more than plain text and lines.
Lastly, I was surprised to learn that he's an artist as well, focusing on highly abstract structures made of stainless steel and, in some cases, re-purposed industrial machinery from farms, power plants and the like.
Clearly one of the more significant minds of our generation. I highly recommend seeing him if the chance comes along, and consider his books to be required reading. Also, he'd bear a striking resemblance to Ben Kingsley if he shaved his head.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
