One of the things that struck me most was how authoritative Tufte’s claims are. His writing style almost sounds religious. Although he does amazing work and many of his claims and opinions on design make sense, I’m curious if his tone implies there’s only one correct “camp” of design. For example, “dark grid lines are chartjunk.” Of course dark grid lines almost always don’t help data analysis, but I was surprised by how direct his argument was.

Also, his use of color and ability to balance different visual elements together is amazing (especially when he’s redesigning the Marshalling signals chart!). Not to mention quantifying basic perception using the “1+1=3” rule. What’s funny though is that so many of these basic principles about information design is practically identical to what graphic design students are taught– and I’m curious if STEM education in general would benefit from a more integrated view of visualization and design and influence how people actually solve heavily quantitative problems.