Excellent graphics are simple, clear pictures of numbers, Tufte argues in
this "landmark" book,
The Visual
Display of Quantitative Information. Basic graphical designs–"box plots,
bar charts, historograms, and scatterplots" (124)–have in common principles of
functional simplicity and clarity. Note the review comment attributed to the
Boston Globe: "A visual Strunk and White." I read the first edition, and it’s
currently out in a second edition, so these notes should be so-understood.
They reflect the 1983 edition–the version that later needed an update for one
reason or other.
Tag: design
New London Group, “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies”
We’re on with four articles for Wednesday’s meeting of 691: Crafting
Researchable Questions. We broke up responsibilities for
question-bringing, two or three primary respondents/discussion-framers to each
of the articles, but I have brief notes here on each of the articles (something
I can carry to class, search later, etc.). My lead article, however, is a
chapter from the New London Group’s Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures.
The citation says the book was published in 2000; this chapter–"A Pedagogy of
Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures"–was circulated as early as 1996, I
think. Roughly, the chapter–the opening chapter in the book–sets
up the what and how of a pedagogy of multiliteracies (many-literacies,
a lifting the lid from monoliteracies…yes?)–the multi- that "allows
[learners] to participate fully in public, community, and economic life" (9).
Visual Shock
Beginning with a brief entry from
Nixlog, I clicked into a now month-old discussion of the visual shock
resulting from the overwhelming complexity of some information graphics.
From
Beyond Bullets:
Have you ever been so confused by the complexity of a map, chart or
diagram, that you didn’t know where to begin to make sense of it?