In this week’s discussion, I’ll be discussing Chapter 5 in Tufte’s Envisioning Information. In particular, he focuses on the fundamental uses of color in information design and how it can aid or sometimes detract from the aims of a piece. For instance, one particular example that stood out to me was the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, which conveys ocean depths and land heights in 21 steps. Rather than making a statement about the color solely, it serves as a clear statement about the geography with every color mark serving a purpose (ie. to communicate attitude, longitude sea or land, and depth or altitude). This resonates the central principles found in the Dondis readings, where color has the ability to “separate worth informationally through symbolically attached meaning.” Interestingly, Dondis also focuses on how colors have a strong emotional affinity for each individual, and I’m curious whether Tufte would consider these emotions to detract from the aims of a piece aimed at conveying very logos-focused pieces. On the flip side, Tufte also points out how color in the wrong context can result in a “failure” for design. For example, he cites Oliver Byrne’s 1847 edition of Euclid’s Geometry, which he argues the reader spends too much time “puzzling over an alphabetic macaroni of 63 encoded links” between diagram and proof. This points toward a broader discussion of properly conveying one’s desired goal when incorporating both text and images, which is what we saw in Chapter 6 of the McCloud readings. McCloud focused on categorizing how to best incorporate text and image, and how an additive combination approach can better serve to amplify the desired message (rather than in Byrne’s case, where the texts and mathematical symbols fail to synergize). Finally, I also found Edward Imhof’s discussion particularly interesting, with regard to the 4 rules governing the role color plays in cartographic science. It echoes much of what we found in Dondis’ visualizing information where form is very much affected by content and content is affected by form. It also raises the question of how universal his rules are, and whether there is a certain degree of interpretation or subjectivity involved?