I was surprised by some very odd typographic choices in Tufte’s new book. Halfway through, he explains: “Systematic regularity of text paragraphs is universally inconvenient for readers… Idiosyncratic paragraphs assist memory and retrieval” A fascinating idea—I’m not sure!
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The tyranny of the grid! The tyranny of text-in-boxes! The oppressive constancy of text-in-boxes-in-rectangles! It is good to see attempts to systematically break this.
“Nearly every paragraph in this book is deliberately visually unique."
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Unsurprisingly, he draws a great deal on typographic ideas from poetry, but his ideas about “text matrices” seem mostly influenced by principles of information architecture.
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This is a particularly dynamic page expressing some really lovely ideas along those lines.
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The “fake title generator” at the bottom seems like an efficient way to represent Zwicky boxes (morphological analysis), uses less space than a table, and you can make new sentences without pressing any buttons blog.mindantix.com/2015/11/thinki
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I especially liked the stacked sentences - reminded me of ’s case in “Magic Ink” for using the high information density of a sentence with selectable sections as controls, rather than making a custom form where the reader must mentally glue the fields into a sentence
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I think that this approach is in line with thinking about the way that album art is a helpful/essential way of creating a memory hook for the structures within songs to sample when DJing. Hooks for re-entering ideas in a larger structure at a more granular level than headings...
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Yes, I think so.
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What is the best way to actually do create such text matrix structures? (Sort of like mind mapping programs?)
I do this already, but clunky and ugly, and would love to see such capabilities embedded in tools for thought.
(including e.g. )
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I feel like there should be a way to create plugins for any tool for thought that uses LaTeX, which allows you to take things from other structure like text, trees, and tables, and show them as beautiful matrices.
( sort of did this for mind maps?; cc )
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After your last rec in favor of Tufte, I've gone through all of his books again (and need to write a retrospective), but these text matrices bug me!
Unnecessary combinatorial explosions seem like a sure way to make sure readers miss something, or to deliver unintended meanings.
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For example from that page...
"A useful typography displays these thesauruses."
Wtf.
It's the author's fundamental job to figure out what they want to say, and the most efficient/effective way to say it. Choose Your Own Adventure: Ad-libs With Nouns does no one any favors.
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Replying to @AndriyTyurnikov
Seeing with Fresh Eyes. edwardtufte.com/tufte/seeing-w
If you’re not familiar with his work, though, I’d suggest starting with his earlier books.
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