Edward R. Tufte Quotes

#1. A curious consequence is that I have become a minor celebrity.

Edward Tufte

#2. Design cannot rescue failed content.

Edward R. Tufte

#3. PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play - very loud, very slow, and very simple.

Edward Tufte

#4. If your words aren't truthful, the finest optically letter-spaced typography won't help,

Edward Tufte

#5. It is not how much empty space there is, but rather how it is used. It is not how much information there is, but rather how effectively it is arranged.

Edward R. Tufte

#6. The minimum we should hope for with any display technology is that it should do no harm.

Edward Tufte

#7. Only drug dealers and software companies call their customers 'users'

Edward Tufte

#8. What is to be sought in designs for the display of information is the clear portrayal of complexity. Not the complication of the simple; rather the task of the designer is to give visual access to the subtle and the difficult - that is, revelation of the complex.

Edward Tufte

#9. If the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers.

Edward R. Tufte

#10. My idea here is that, inasmuch as certain cognitive tasks and principles are tied to nature's laws, these tasks and principles are indifferent to language, culture, gender, or the particular mode of information that is provided.

Edward Tufte

#11. Great design is not democratic; it comes from great designers. If the standard is lousy, then develop another standard.

Edward Tufte

#12. If you like overheads, you'll love PowerPoint.

Edward Tufte

#13. Make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible, but still clear and effective.

Edward Tufte

#14. The point of the essay is to change things.

Edward Tufte

#15. What gets left out is the narrative between the bullets, which would tell us who's going to do what and how we're going to achieve the generic goals on the list.

Edward Tufte

#16. A metaphor for good information design is a map. Hold any diagram against a map and see how it compares.

Edward Tufte

#17. Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual.

Edward Tufte

#18. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.

Edward Tufte

#19. I am certainly not an intellectual relativist, nor a moral relativist.

Edward Tufte

#20. If you're told what to look for, you can't see anything else.

Edward Tufte

#21. Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose.

Edward R. Tufte

#22. The idea of trying to create things that last - forever knowledge - has guided my work for a long time now.

Edward Tufte

#23. Comparisons must be enforced within the scope of the eyespan, a fundamental point occasionally forgotten in practice.

Edward R. Tufte

#24. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won't make them relevant.

Edward Tufte

#25. Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space.

Edward R. Tufte

#26. I have stared long enough at the glowing flat rectangles of computer screens. Let us give more time for doing things in the real world ... plant a plant, walk the dogs, read a real book, go to the opera.

Edward R. Tufte

#27. Above all else show the data.

Edward R. Tufte

#28. I hope that I am generous and tolerant, but certainly on the intellectual side I think that there are discoverable truths, and some things that are closer approximations to the truth than others.

Edward Tufte

#29. There are many true statements about complex topics that are too long to fit on a PowerPoint slide.

Edward Tufte

#30. If the statistics are boring, you've got the wrong numbers.

Edward Tufte

#31. Here's the general theory: To clarify, add detail. Imagine that. To clarify, add detail. And clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don't start throwing out information, instead fix the design.

Edward Tufte

#32. To clarify, *add* data.

Edward R. Tufte

#33. Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication. Or, worse, to fault viewers for a lack of understanding.

Edward Tufte

#34. My father worked for governments all his life as an engineer and public works director.

Edward Tufte

#35. Cosmetic decoration, which frequently distorts the data, will never salvage an underlying lack of content.

Edward R. Tufte

#36. Clutter is not a property of information. Clutter is a failure of design.

Edward Tufte

#37. The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly - to develop strategies of seeing and showing.

Edward Tufte

#38. After all, as Edward Tufte once said, "Overload, clutter, and confusion are not attributes of information, they are failures of design.

Golden Krishna

#39. The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensiona l;
the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent
the rich visual world of experience and
measurement on mere flatland?

Edward Tufte

#40. Good design is clear thinking made visible, bad design is stupidity made visible

Edward Tufte

#41. Beautiful Evidence is about the theory and practice of analytical design.

Edward Tufte

#42. The world is generally multivariate

Edward Tufte

#43. I was writing a chapter of Beautiful Evidence on the subject of the sculptural pedestal, which led to my thinking about what's up on the pedestal - the great leader.

Edward Tufte

#44. The speculative part of my work is that these particular cognitive tasks - ways of thinking analytically - are tied to nature's laws.

Edward Tufte

#45. Design isn't crafting a beautiful, textured button with breathtaking animation. It's figuring out if there's a way to get rid of the button altogether.

Edward Tufte

#46. The best graphics are about the useful and important, about life and death, about the universe. Beautiful graphics do not traffic with the trivial.

Edward Tufte

#47. Small, noncomparative, highly labeled data sets usually belong in tables.

Edward R. Tufte

#48. Public discussions are part of what it takes to make changes in the trillions of graphics published each year.

Edward Tufte

#49. Science and art have in common intense seeing, the wide-eyed observing that generates empirical information.

Edward Tufte

#50. PowerPoint is like being trapped in the style of early Egyptian flatland cartoons rather than using the more effective tools of Renaissance visual representation.

Edward R. Tufte

#51. I think it is important for software to avoiding imposing a cognitive style on workers and their work.

Edward Tufte

#52. The world is much more interesting than any one discipline.

Edward Tufte

#53. Information design has been around since the 1970s. Pioneers like Yale University design guru Edward Tufte and design agency Pentagram have long known and used its power. But now with the rise of the Internet, it's having something of a second birth.

David McCandless

#54. There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. If something is cluttered and/or confusing, fix your design.

Edward Tufte