edwardtufte.com

Avoid Chartjunk

The need for good information design is not just about aesthetics. An enormous volume of invaluable—even life-or-death—data is rendered in slides and graphs. Getting these wrong, Tufte is quick to point out, can cost lives. Here he offers an "analytical disaster" when six sets of similar medical data are put into default PowerPoint designs. The resulting graphs are guilty of practically every design flaw Tufte can name, from meaningless color to "chartjunk," his term for unnecessary visual elements.

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