In Tufte’s “Color and Information”, he highlights a few rules for good practices in design all revolving around the use of color. These rules focus on conveying information in a way that is effective and easy for the reader to comprehend and find visually pleasant. One of the quotes that stood out to me during the reading was “so much visual excitement, so little data” when describing ineffective/excessive color usage, ehich is exactly what we want to avoid.

I never really though about the effectiveness of grey backgrounds, but when thinking of Tufte’s first and third rule of using bright colors with dull background tones (as opposed to having multiple bright colors next to each other clashing) I realized that it produces really effective results by conveying only the data that is important. The second rule also relates to this in terms of how separating bright colors with white only makes the contrast worse by emphasizing their contrast.

All of Tufte’s rules seem to relate back to visual cohesion. For example, the fourth rule communicates how having large enclosed areas of two different colors breaks up the image. However, if these different colors are intermixed, the message does not get lost. This goes hand in hand with the use of gradients and value scales, especially in maps.