1/5. This book made me angry. Which is sad, because Tufte’s other books made me so happy.
Most of all, the design. “Nearly every paragraph in this book is deliberately visually unique,” he writes on page 59 of “Seeing with Fresh Eyes”…and they really are. And I did not like that.
I got distracted from the content by
- the different line heights/text column widths (often way too wide)/typefaces
- the sloppy alignment
- the crammed pages
- the bad editing (extra spaces and capital letters where they don’t belong, etc.)
Design is not used well in this book to lead the reader’s eye, motivate them to read, or give them a sense of structure/hierarchy. It’s easy to miss chapter headlines when skimming the book.
But even with a great design, the content wouldn’t have made me recommend this book. The only testimonial on the book is by Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog. And that’s how Tufte’s new book feels like in design and content: A not-so-well-done Whole Earth Catalog, with some interesting bits, but many of them not well-enough explained, and with no strong overaching concept.
I’m left disappointed and frustrated.