Reading Response#1 To Envisioning Information

Many times, when artists do information design in my opinion, they have trouble putting art and words together to show the information that the audience needs to know. I too have trouble doing this. Sometimes, it is hard to express the information in visuals because, doing good visual design is only limited to your knowledge and imagination. Also, the use of the colors can make information design great to look at or disastrous. Colors are important if they are put together correctly. I have already learned that putting all soft or all bright colors together will not be as effective for making good information design restated from Envisioning Information by Tufte. Many of the information from the reading seems both useful and helpful about how to use colors for visual information and design to work as one.

I have learned a lot about colors such as we can see millions of color at the same and know the difference. Also, depending on what colors the designers’ use in their work it can affect people’s reaction, either in a negative or positive way. From the readings of Envisioning Information I realize I do not know how to arrange colors properly to make my design effective. I never thought about the placement of colors can be used as symbols for information, until the readings. I think I need to explore more with the usage of colors, symbols, and text to get better with my design. However, the basic concepts of using colors with value, saturation, and harmony are still important when it comes to the use of colors.

I like many of the examples that our text book shows and its explanation about each visual examples of different ways of showing data, color, text, and sometimes symbols put together. I also like how the book tells you why certain visual information works and/ or doesn’t work. I learn that you can use colors as symbols to represent certain data as well as it can be a design. Also, it very important to know how to arrange colors like complementary, hues, shades, and etc to make the colors effective on what you think is important to the audience. However, I disagree with Tuft, the author the author of my textbook Envisioning Information that his example of the Swiss Map is good design of colors, text, and grid. To me, the Swiss Map is hard for me to follow because, the colors are too muted and the text does not blend well with the faded background. It is very hard for me to see the difference of the different regions of the Swiss Map.