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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Name of the book, please 🙃🧐
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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.