Tufte

I like how clearly Tufte was able to explain how color can be used effectively and how it can harm a design. I especially thought the math proof using color coding was great, because when used in combination with the alphabet-labeling notation I thought it was a greatly improved diagram over the only-color/only-letters. It reminds me of the McCloud reading for combining image with text, when both explain the same situation for clarity, and not to add meaning to each other necessarily.

I also appreciated two of Tufte’s points, that colors from nature are usefully familiar in design and that contour information can be given with thin/subtle lines, because of how they related to the Science of Art reading / Gestalt theory. Lots of the arguments in the Science of Art paper came back to our eyes perceiving certain things as pleasing because our visual processing is based on images of nature, which felt similar to Tufte’s color argument. The insistence by Tufte to only give the “presence of a line” I felt was supported by the Law of Good Continuation since people already do a lot of work to distinguish between feels by following vague contours.

Few

I didn’t really know what to pull from the Few reading. His breakdown of the study was good, but it seemed so obviously faulty that I found myself frustrated with how general the final takeaway was: to base the design on the content and audience. One of his final points, that embellishment can only enhance effectiveness as long as it doesn’t distract/misrepresent, was too general for me to agree with completely but also felt too simple as a final point that I’m not sure if I missed something.