I've long been an admirer of Edward Tufte's design books, especially The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
It was with this book that he became famous as a guru of Information Design, partially for his analysis of Charles Joseph Minard's infographic of the disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia by France.
He concentrates on detailing how to make graphics that present information clearly and succinctly, while avoiding common design problems. He gives examples throughout history of good designs and bad designs, and explains why they are so. As someone who went to business school, and who sat through too many business meetings, it is clear to me that too few people are familiar with Tufte's work.
From an interview with Tufte, here is how he got started on the path of Information Design:
In the mid-1970s, while at Princeton, I gave a statistics course to a dozen journalists who were visiting the school. I thought "Well, journalists have to know about statistical graphics...", so I prepared a collection of readings, with a section on statistical graphics. The literature was thin, grimly devoted to explaining use of the ruling pen and to promulgating "graphic standards" indifferent to sensible quantitative reasoning. Soon I started writing up some ideas about my growing collection of graphics. Then John W. Tukey, the phenomenal Princeton statistician, suggested that we give a series of joint seminars. Tukey had opened up the field in the mid-1960s, as his brilliant technical contributions made it clear that the study of statistical graphics was intellectually respectable and not just about pie charts and ruling pens. This focused my mind, since I had to talk for two hours every other week to the students in front of John Tukey! The seminar proved reassuring: I had something to say. Those seminars led to my first book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and changed my life, all to the good.
 Graphics Press |
From a Wired article about Tufte's thoughts on PowerPoint:
PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector. But rather than supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it. Such misuse ignores the most important rule of speaking: Respect your audience.
From an interview with Tufte on NPR:
Far too often, he says, the bells and whistles of PowerPoint are used as a crutch by people who don't have anything to say. "If your words aren't truthful, the finest optically letter spaced typography won't help," he says. "And if your images aren't on point, making them dance in color in three dimensions won't help."
His new book, Beautiful Evidence