Edward Tufte’ Beautiful Evidence is the latest in a series of impressive books about visualization and design. I can’t help thinking that this time he has overstretched himself.
First, he doesn’t really tackle the “beautiful” in the title. What is the difference between beautiful evidence and informative evidence? What makes evidence beautiful and is that different from informative? Underlying this is a question about the difference between design and art, which I think he has chosen to ignore as I can’t find it discussed in the book. He is, however, aware of it – here is a quote from a long (PDF) interview in Technical Communication Quarterly:
Beautiful Evidence follows a growing concern in my work: assessing the quality of evidence and of finding out the truth. The other side is that sometimes displays of evidence have, as a byproduct, extraordinary beauty. I mean beautiful here in two senses: aesthetic or pretty but also amazing, wonderful, powerful, never before seen. In emphasizing evidential quality and beauty, I also want to move the practices of analytical design far away from the practices of propaganda, marketing, graphic design, and commercial art. (Page 450)
Second, the book reads like a collection of essays. He has put the The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint and an essay on sparklines in the book, even though they don’t quite fit. Finally, the book ends with plates of his sculpture which seem to be an ad for his sculpture and only loosely connected to evidence.