Dispatch from Palo Alto: A Joy in this Intensely Multivariate World: Edward Tufte's "Presenting Data and Information"

C'est moi in Palo Alto,
After the ET Presenting Data and Information workshop

Yonder back, about a decade ago, on the rave recommendation of a graphic designer friend, I took Edward Tufte's one day workshop, Presenting Data and Information, and it was such a joy of an inspiration that ever since I had wanted to take the class a second time. Finally, in Palo Alto this Monday, it was possible. Herewith a few notes and links:

Beautiful Evidence, one of several books by ET

Website: www.tufte.com
Includes more than 200 essays

Books by Edward Tufte

Twitter: @EdwardTufte

Links from the handout:

+ The Future of Data Analysis, video of Edward Tufte's keynote talk, September 2016

+ Ingre Druckrey: Teaching to See, docfilm produced by Edward Tufte and directed by Andrei Severny

+ "The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis" David Lazer, Ryan Kennedy, Gary King, Alessandro Vespignani  [PDF]

+ "The Quartz Guide to Bad Data: An Exhaustive Reference" 

From Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte:

"clutter and confusion are failure of design, not attributes of information" (p. 51)

"What we seek... is a rich texture of data, a comparative context, an understanding of complexity" (p.51)

Visual Explanations by Edward Tufte
Practical advice for presentations on p. 68.


From this workshop, random E.T. quotes of note:

"the world is intensely multivariate"

"respect your audience, endlessly"

"I'm not going to dumb things down, I'm going to make everyone smarter"

"How do I know that? How do they know that?"

"Start with a document, not a deck"

"Keep architecture simple, content rich" 

"A visualization should provide reasons to believe"

"If you have any reason to bring in a three dimensional object, do so"

"Find successful things in the wild. Where is the ceiling of excellence?"

"Keep an open mind, not an empty head"

"The point of an information presentation is to explain something with credibility and to help viewers understand the content, help them reason. Show causality."

"Separate the sheep from the goats"

"Sculpture is a work of art that casts shadows"

"When things are spacially adjacent this lets the audience be in charge"

I eagerly await ET's forthcoming book, Meaning and Space. 

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

On Seeing as an Artist or, 

Five Steps for a Journey to Einfuhlung

Five Super Simple Tips for Better Book Design

The Chocolate-Boxy Yum of Small Multiples

Five Super Simple Tips for Better Book Design (Plus Notes on Adobe InDesign and Email Ninjerie)

While it may have become far easier to self-publish, most self-published books look... well, self-published. As do many put out by newbie small presses, alas. So for my dear friend who recently asked-- and for you, dear reader--here are my top tips for making your book look professionally designed, which is to say, reader-friendly. 

1. For your text choose an easy-on-the-eye font.

Do not get lost in that gnarly list of fonts already installed in your computer! The best way to grok this is to get up from your computer and walk over to your own bookshelves. Pull down several titles of books that you have already read and loved. My bet is, these books are well-designed or else you wouldn't have managed to finish reading them. So look at those fonts. Emulate those fonts! And if any of them do happen to be hard on your eyes, why subject your readers to them? 

This blog uses Georgia, an easy-on-the-eye font for print text. 

This image shows the sort of fonts to avoid because-- I'm sure we can agree-- they're challenging to read:

2. Consider pairing a sans-serif font for chapter titles (and possibly also subtitles) with a serif font for the text. 

This isn't a must, but it often works nicely. Here are some examples of sans-serif and serif font pairings that might work for you:

A few sans-serif fonts I like:

Arial, Gill Sans, Helvetica, Verdana

A few serif fonts I like:

Baskerville, Garamond, Georgia, Sabon, Times Roman

> Free fonts!

3. Be a Midas with your margins!

The first thing that screams "self-published" and "amateur" is a page with text splatulaed into every corner. Why such Scroogerie with blank paper is so common mystifies me because everybody knows from their own experience that it is, indeed, exhausting for the eye to follow long lines of crowded text. Badly designed books usually end up, sooner or later, in a dump-- now there's a waste of paper.

4. Break up your text, where appropriate.

Another thing that makes it easier on the reader's eyes: Where appropriate (I know, sometimes it's not), break up big chunks of text into smaller  paragraphs and/or other breaks. For example:

5. For chapter and/or section openings, consider using a drop cap and/or some variation to the text such as caps and/or bold and/or italics and/or even another font.

More tricks to make it easier on the reader's eyes. This first example shows a drop cap (from the opening chapter of my latest book):

This next image is the opening chapter of my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. The design for this was done by publisher, Unbridled Books. The point is: you can really get wiggy with those drop caps!

Here is an example without a drop cap but the opening text is in capitals and bold:

Again, look through the books on your bookshelf that you have already read and loved and see if you can identify some of these elements-- and more. 

A Note on Adobe InDesign
If you plan to print a proper paperback book, as opposed to something you run off at Office Depot or your local copy shop,  you will need to get your design into Adobe InDesign and from there make a PDF. Adobe InDesign has a frighteningly steep learning curve-- and picture at the top of the cliff some ogres readying to roll down a boulder or three. I venture that unless you're a software whiz or are planning to make a profession of graphic design, the few hundred dollars to hire a professional to format your book would probably be money well spent. 

There are oodles more notions about book design and a hundred and seventeen ways to get started on that monster of a subject. My number one recommendation is to take Edward Tufte's one day workshop if you possibly can. 

Apart from all of the above, I have little more to say on this subject because I am not an expert on designing books; what I do is write them. But hey, designing books isn't rocket science, necessarily.


A Note on Email Ninjerie
Back in the late 1990s and 2000s, I used to get torrents of emails asking my advice about the publishing business, e.g., Do I need an agent? How can I find a publisher? How can I promote my book? I'm a writer, not a publishing or marketing expert, but anyway, an age ago, I realized that I could do the right karma thing and save chunkoids of email time by simply posting my answers to these frequently asked questions on my website. 

In other words, if you, dear reader-- whether friend, writing workshop student, or mysterious Albanian--(bless you all, mysterious Albanians)-- were to write to me with any of these questions, I would respond email-ninja-like with a link to My Answers to the 3 Most Frequently Asked Questions About the Writing "Business."

(I do have assistants but when it comes to emails they're all paws.)

Ah, but how things have morphed with the digital revolution! Now the questions many of my students and fellow writers often ask me are: How can I start my blog? How should I handle social media? How should I go about self-publishing an ebook and/or a print book? (Most of my books have been traditionally published, including with two university presses, but my most recent book, on a very niche subject, is under my own imprint, Dancing Chiva. Translation: Yes, I do know a bit about self-publishing.) 

Email ninjadom in service of good karma continues! I now offer my answers to frequently asked questions with posts including Getting Started with Blogs and Websites; How I Published My Kindles; and It's Not Peanut Butter and Jelly But It's Not Rocket Science Either or, How I Made My POD (And You Can, Too). (And more over on my Resources for Writers page.) And now, added to all of that, is this post. 

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

UPDATE: See also the excellent post on formatting a book interior by Holly Brady.

Trajan: The Movie Font

At the FIL or, The Mexican Megabookmashup

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Q & A with Michele Orwin, Founding Publisher of Bacon Press Books

Re: Ye Olde Website Tufte-esqued or, The Chocolate-Boxy Yum of Small Multiples

An eon ago I had the ginormous fortune to attend Edward Tufte's one day workshop on Presenting Data and Information. (Cost: 2 - 6 pairs of shoes, excellent value, jump-up-and-down recommended. And would that every government official in all the lands could attend!) 

One of the multitudinous things I learned on that day was what Tufte calls the power of small multiples. Finally, over the past weekend, I got around to applying it to some of the subpages on ye olde ever-morphing and mountainous website, www.cmmayo.com.

From Tufte's Envisioning Information, chapter 4, "Small Multiples": "Small multiples reveal, all at once, a scope of alternatives, a range of options." Um, yum, like a box of chocolates! 

Here are Tufte's books, displayed, yea verily, as small multiples:

I invite you to visit my website to view my books and other publications, now displayed as small multiples. If you've seen my website in the past, you will note an all-new look, which is thanks to fonts and glyphs from my latest unscheduled enthusiasm, The New Victorian Printshop by Walden Fonts. Whee, that was fun. 

Behold the new Tufte-esqued subpages with banners:

Books

Literary Travel Writing

Short Fiction

Yes, it would seem that I am procrastinating on writing my book about Far West Texas. Or am I? I like to think that a writer's website, whatever her visual and technical skills may or may not be, is an integral part of her work.

P.S. A shoutout for Jane Friedman, whose advice for my website headers and organization was most helpful. I also warmly recommend her free choc-full-of-helpful-nuggets newsletter.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

For Mexicophiles

Adios FaceBook! The Six Reasons Why I Deactivated My Account

Getting Started with Websites and Blogs

E.T. Links: Workshop, NPR, Sparklines

Those of you who have been following my blog know what a ginormous fan I am of the work of Edward Tufte, aka "E.T." I recommend his brilliant and all-around fun one day workshop on presenting data and information to anyone and everyone with a functioning frontal cortex. Just a few days ago there was a story on National Public Radio about his wide-ranging work, "The Many Faces (And Sculptures) of Edward Tufte," which you can listen to on-line here. The story mentions his work for recovery.gov--- be sure to check that out. And you can read more about his ingenious "sparklines" here. More anon.

Edward Tufte on Best Election Data Displays

Madam Mayo continues to sing the praises of E.T., Minister of Information! Check out his Best Election Data Displays.

One Day Writing Workshops

I love the one day writing workshop format. I've been giving these ("Break the Block"; Literary Travel Writing", "Flash Fiction" "Techniques of Fiction" & etc) for some years now at the Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and also, lately, via Dancing Chiva in Mexico City. Why do I love it? Unlike an on-going workshop, a one day is much easier for me to fit into my travel-cluttered schedule, and I not only get more students, I get a more varied group. I've had many beginners, but also magazine editors, accomplished journalists, and many who've published books. So it keeps me sharp. And I love taking one day workshops myself--- it's a way to freshen up, get jolt of inspiration. At the Writers Center, I've taken, and warmly recommend, Khris Baxter's one day short screenplay writing workshop, Lindsay Reed Maines's yoga and writing one day workshop. And, though not a writing workshop, as I did find it extraordnarily helpful for my novel, I recommend Edward Tufte's splendid and entertaining one day course, Presenting Data and Information.

And two more recommendations: this fall, my amiga award-winning novelist, short story writer and essayist Leslie Pietrzyk will be offering two all-new one day workshops at the Writers Center, "Set Your Prose Free Through Collage" and "Flex Your Creative Muscles." Over at her blog, Work-in-Progress, she provides a full description of both.

More anon.

VidLit Monday

It's both a new art form and a new PR tool: the book trailer, a subspecies of "vid-lit," so called after VidLit, a company that makes videos for books. Here's an example of a book trailer (not by that company, as far as I can tell), for James Howard Kunstler's novel, World Made By Hand, which certainly encourages the idea of a "movie based on." And here are several more examples of book trailers. Less-slick are Steven Hart's Thrill-a-Minute Skyway Cam video, apropos of his book, The Last Three Miles: Poltics, Murder and the Construction of America's First Superhighway and Gayle Brandeis's video for her new novel, Self-Storage. As I have a novel coming out next year, I'm interested in the form, but I'm also enchanted by the possibilities of incorporating sound and image (both still and moving) to fiction itself--- especially flash fiction. It's a very different concept than dramatizing the work, as in a movie-like trailer. Neither is it anything like an almost purely visual feast (e.g., Tufte's video about his sculpture, "ZZ Smile"), or even, as Internet film-maker Nick Askew does, a series of mini-documentaries on www.soulbiographies.com.
P.S. Here's some ancient history: the 2005 National Public Radio piece on vid-lit.

Edward Tufte's "ZZ Smile"

Via www.tufte.com : a brief and elegant video in which the moon turns into a tooth and the sky sails by.

...And Paula Whyman, "Curious Writer"

Another DC writing amiga has an excellent new webpage: check out Paula Whyman's, which includes a page called "discussion"--- which Madam Mayo dubs a blog, because a blog is not a blog is a blog is... whatever. It's all blogging now, including Edward Tufte's "moderated forum". More anon.

Madam Mayo's Top 10 Writers's Blogs

Coming up Feb 9th: the Washington Independent Writers (WIW) All-Day Fiction Seminar at American University, Washington DC, for which I'm chairing the panel on writers blogs. So, what makes for a good writer's blog? I'm working on a list; meanwhile, here is a list of 10 that, though not necessarily my personal favorites, are outstanding examples of the genre.

#1. Design expert and author Edward Tufte's Ask E.T.
He calls it a moderated forum. Yeah, I'm calling the page a blog because I want to.

#2. Novelist and journalist James Howard Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation
Once a week, a zippy op-ed style essay.

#3. Novelist and creative writing teacher Leslie Pietrzyk's Work-in-Progress
Highly focused and meaty with helpful information. Frequently updated and features many guest-bloggers.

#4. Poet and literary magazine editor Deborah Ager's 32 Poems
Wide-ranging, quirky, frequently updated. Big on Web 2.0 tools.

#5. Childrens writer Erica Perl's Pajamazon
Childrens' book recommendations (and a bit more). Part of Offsprung news.

#6. Travel writer Rolf Potts' Vagabonding
Fun, daily updates, multiple bloggers working for him.

#7. Professor of History, Middle East expert and author Juan Cole's Informed Comment
One of the go-to places for news about Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Updated daily with multiple links and commentary. (Boy howdy does he sell ads!)

#8. Novelist Laila Lailami's Moorish Girl
She's been around almost from the time blogging began.

#9. Editor, graphic designer, translator and writer Tom Christensen's Right-reading
Eclectic quality links, and he encourages both mail and comments.

#10. A cabal of crime novelists's Naked Authors
Regular posting by Paul Levin, Patricia Smiley, James O. Born, Jacqueline Winspear, and Cornelia Read.

------>Is there a writer's blog you think I should know about?

More anon. And meanwhile, click here for the Gone to the Litblogs archive.

Madam Mayo's Top 10 Books Read in 2007

1. Patricia Klindienst, The Earth Knows My Name
Strange, moving, beautiful.

2. Sam Quinones, Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream
If you want to understand modern Mexico, you must read Quinones. (I reviewed his first book, True Tales from Another Mexico, here.)

3. Halldor Laxness, Atom Station
(Reykjavik, ho!)

4. Janet Lewis, The Wife of Martin Guerre
This may well be the best novela written in English, ever. Every page, every scene, every image, is stunningly vivid. And the author lived in Los Altos, California! Too incongruous.

5. Hermoine Lee, Edith Wharton
At last, Wharton has the bio she deserves. A grand, plummy pleasure to read, all 850+ pages.

6. Mary Morris, The River Queen
A heart-felt personal memoir of a journey to rival Huck Finn's own.

7. Dale C. Carson and Wes Denham, Arrest-Proof Yourself
Witty, wise, and very disturbing. The authors's dedication says it all: "To the thousands of young men in jail for petty offenses. It's not right. It's not just. America can do better." Read my post on this book here.

8. Janice Eidus, The War of the Rosens
A masterfully told story of a family in the Bronx in the 1960s.

9. Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence
I selected this one for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Non-Fiction.

10. Edward Tufte, Beautiful Evidence
And read my rave about his one day course.

---> Read Madam Mayo's Top 10 Books Read in 2006 here.

Back blogging December 5th.

Links-a-Daisy for D.

My amiga D. asked me to send her these links--- I thought, why not post them on my blog? Tres 2007. Et voila:

---> Janet's "Tea and Obama" page.

---> Edward Tufte's amazing one day course, Presenting Data and Information--- upcoming in Houston, Texas, by the way. (And here's one of my several posts about Tufte's workshop.)

---> Huffington Post (Ariana Huffington = Marta Sahagun de Fox x Hannah Arendt--- yes, a most original creature).

---> All about the Military Commissions Act. Read it and freak.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Re: Edward Tufte--- still raving to all who will listen about his superb one day workshop, Presenting Data and Information--- the title of which in no way suggests the fun of it all. (See my previous blog post on Tufte here.) In his fourth book, Beautiful Evidence, he presents Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, an illustrated book probably written by the monk Francesco Colonna and published in Venice in 1499. Tufte's point is that the harmonious presentation of pictures and text is so extraordinary that it is, as he calls it, "a forever beauty." --->Here's the MIT Press's on-line electronic version of the entire tome. And here are a few more pages from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili:
What especially interests me about this is the integration of pictures and text--- which is exactly what I've been doing, almost every day since I began blogging, using the www.blogger.com software. And yet, my novel does not have any illustrations. I've always considered illustrations kind of, well, cheesy. But I reconsider... More anon.

Madam Mayo Hearts Sparklines

Sparklines, conceptualized by Edward Tufte, are "small, high resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers, images." In other words, "intense, simple, word-sized graphics." Use these and get off your burro and onto the Concorde--- really. Here's an excerpt from Tufte's book and a discussion thread. And here's the wiki. Here's my rave about the workshop. More anon.

The Power of Small Multiples

Still amazed by Edward Tufte's workshop... (which I blogged about here)... In one of his several books, Envisioning Information, he dedicates an entire chapter to small multiples, and the power of fitting them into an eyespan. Et voila, I put some small multiples onto the home page of Tameme. Now if I could just figure out how to do that on this blog... More anon.

All Hail E.T., Minister of Information

Yesterday I attended Edward Tufte's workshop--- one of the best I have ever taken. To my amazement, I found it mega-useful for everything from designing a webpage to evaluating stories in the newspaper, to writing literary fiction. Whether you are an economist, a lawyer, or a rocket scientist, take this workshop, my friend. You will never use Power Point again! Here's a recent article about Tufte in New York Magazine. The cover, pictured left, is of his latest book, Beautiful Evidence. More anon.