With a design thinking mindset, he created iteration after iteration of the book. Just holding the book in your hand and flicking through the pages is enough to convey just how much meticulous effort went into every part of it, but for a perfectionist like Tufte, it was never enough. Tufte includes within the book a graphic of Napolean’s march to and from Moscow.
With no other options, he took out a second mortgage on his house and self-published the book himself, working closely with the graphic artist Howard Gralla to ensure that every line was exactly where he wanted it to be. After years of bouncing back and forth between the big five publishers, Tufte realized that none of them were ever going to accommodate the quality levels that he demanded. He has frequently pressed back against the trend towards aesthetics’ prominence over function in graphic design, so it should come as no surprise that he struggled to find a publisher for the book that could meet his exacting standards. Tufte was well known for being a perfectionist. Throughout the late 70s, he compiled the information for The Visual Display of Quantitative Information while lecturing at Princeton University alongside the renowned John Tukey, another fore-runner to the field of information design. He is recognized most frequently for his professorship at Yale and pioneering the field of data visualization.
Tufte is primarily known as a statistician, although he started his academic career in political science. Not just because of its contents, but because the object itself is the pinnacle of information design in the book format.
Edward Tufte’s book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is one of the most important books on design that I’ve ever read.
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