graphics

Standards of excellence for information design are set by high quality maps, with diverse bountiful detail, several layers of close reading combined with an overview, and rigorous data from engineering surveys. In contrast, the usual chartjunk performances look more like posters than maps. Posters are meant for viewing from a distance, with their strong images, large type, and thin data densities. Thus poster design provides very little counsel for making diagrams that are read more intensely. Display of closely-read data surely requires the skilled craft of good graphic and poster design: typography, object representation, layout, color, production techniques, and visual principles that inform criticism and revision. Too often those skills are accompanied by the ideology of chartjunk and data posterization; excellence in presenting information requires mastering the craft and spurning the ideology. - Edward Tufte