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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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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I’m conflicted on this point. I agree with what you’re saying, and at the same time, I find it’s often quite instructive to try several different verbal angles on the same idea.
Different people “read” different metaphors in different ways. Sometimes you have to explain an idea to person a differently than person b. If there is a succinct way to communicate a single idea in multiple dimensions that strikes me as more eloquent even if more words are used.
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But this is the exact opposite problem, too few words are being used to describe too many ideas!
In the example, the first list has 6 items, and the second has 9! That's 54 different combinations! Did Tufte consider and intend them all? Is the reader supposed to?
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