Tufte starts this chapter with a quote I really like: “Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information.” I really like this quote because of the ownership and responsibility it gives the designer to decode data into visualizations. Layering and separation help segment aspects of data. It’s tricky because various elements will always interact just because they are present in the same space, regardless of if the designer intends for these elements to be perceived together — a concept known as “1+1=3”, because the combined information becomes something else.

The first example with the parts manual was quite simple and easily understandable. I think a more complex example would’ve actually been more beneficial, especially with more layering, maybe for different parts of the item. However, it was a very good example of colors helping differentiate using annotation. In contrast, I disliked the later city map where it was honestly a lot more difficult to differentiate between the color differences the author was talking about.

The concept of “data imprisonment” is very interesting to me because the common perception of data is usually using tables with a grid system. However, I definitely see Tufte’s point — I really like spreadsheets where different cells are merged and add more dimension and understanding to the data given, for example. I think looser divisions are also more aesthetically pleasing to me — for example, not just heavy border lines for each cell, and use of color blocks to separate. I really like the example with the music staff because I’ve noticed this particularly with handwriting in music staff books that more bolded staffs make it more difficult to write things down and everything looks less cohesive even if it’s played the same, and I also really like the concept of layering using negative space.