- Unknown Binding: 126 pages
- Publisher: Graphics Press; Rev. ed. edition (1991)
- Language English
- ASIN: B001NWSES4
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As many reviewers have noted, this book does not provide guidance. It is more like a museum with examples of interesting work. If you like to browse and you get inspired, perfect! If you desire guidance on design -- perhaps an earlier book by Tufte would be more suitable.
29 of 38 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
... though there are plenty others in the book that are fascinating.
I flipped open the book just now and arrived at a discussion of whether Maya Ying Lin's Vietnam Memorial should have had the names ordered by date of death or alphabetically. As there were over 600 Smiths who died in Vietnam and 16 James Joneses, an alphabetical listing would have given the memorial the flavor of a telephone directory.
Tufte persuasively argues and demonstrates how graphic design and information presentation affects thinking, decision-making, and emotion.
Format:Hardcover
Tufte is brilliant, and this is the missing manual on report and user-interface design. Its very good at making you think differently - much like a Guru of The Week for design.
I purchased this book so that my team could use it for inspiration on new report designs (KPIs, dashboards, trend analyses etc). Our primary problem being that we work with non-math/technical people who needed very simplified reports for complex problems. Tufte's work and cutting analysis seemed a good place to start.
Don't be fazed by the fact that the examples in this book have no immediate relevance to your problem: just thumb through the book, and try to understand why the examples are good or bad. A number of patterns will start to emerge, and its these patterns that will inspire and direct you to your solutions. For example, we took the Japanese map at the beginning, combined it with the no-gridlines rule and the novel train-timetables and ended up with a simple printed report which condensed multi-dimensional information into a perspective drawing interspersed with floating blocks. So instead of churning out pages of Excel reports, we created a simple dashboard that uses colour and perspective to draw focus to the important data. If you keep an open mind, and ignore your technical limitations, you will learn a lot from this book.
However, this book will only show you design inspiration; it will does not consider how the designs can be implemented or applied, and it does not explain the art of data analysis, KPI/Scorecard design. It is very shallow in any area other than report design. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information should be read alongside this book. For technical issues of implementing these ideas in Excel/Office, I would recommend Balanced Scorecards and Operational Dashboards with Microsoft Excel. That said, this books ideas are best implemented in html.
I purchased this book so that my team could use it for inspiration on new report designs (KPIs, dashboards, trend analyses etc). Our primary problem being that we work with non-math/technical people who needed very simplified reports for complex problems. Tufte's work and cutting analysis seemed a good place to start.
Don't be fazed by the fact that the examples in this book have no immediate relevance to your problem: just thumb through the book, and try to understand why the examples are good or bad. A number of patterns will start to emerge, and its these patterns that will inspire and direct you to your solutions. For example, we took the Japanese map at the beginning, combined it with the no-gridlines rule and the novel train-timetables and ended up with a simple printed report which condensed multi-dimensional information into a perspective drawing interspersed with floating blocks. So instead of churning out pages of Excel reports, we created a simple dashboard that uses colour and perspective to draw focus to the important data. If you keep an open mind, and ignore your technical limitations, you will learn a lot from this book.
However, this book will only show you design inspiration; it will does not consider how the designs can be implemented or applied, and it does not explain the art of data analysis, KPI/Scorecard design. It is very shallow in any area other than report design. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information should be read alongside this book. For technical issues of implementing these ideas in Excel/Office, I would recommend Balanced Scorecards and Operational Dashboards with Microsoft Excel. That said, this books ideas are best implemented in html.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Perhaps just not the book for me..
I bought after I read all the great reviews about this book. I should say I am disappointed. I was expecting this book to give me great and arcane insights about how to present... Read more
Published on 15 May 2009 by PATSYS
Beautiful illustrations and ideas
I am very impressed by the book's quality. Beautiful examples nicely explained, the layout and colour of the book itself all reflecting the author's ideas quite well. Read more
Published on 27 Nov 1999
More than I knew ...
I put his work to use. I make a lot of charts and tables, and I am more satisfied now that I put his advise to work on a project I'm on. Read more
Published on 27 Mar 1999
DISAPPOINTING
The book is expensive,thin, and misses the point. The illustrations for the book are never labelled, so you have no idea where the text refers to the illos! Read more
Published on 21 Dec 1997
Simply THE bible for every designer in the information age!!
Ed Tufte has created an essential resource for every software designer and developer that imparts the RELIGION of good design, while avoiding the typical lists of "do's"... Read more
Published on 5 Jun 1997
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