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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Yes… he comments in a few places about typographic choices which e.g. force the reader to slow down, or which make it easier for readers to experimentally combine different paths through the text.
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I don’t know. Tufte’s books are very unusual, so it’s hard to compare my experience with this book to others! :)