I’m just now getting around to synthesizing the notes I took at Edward Tufte’s course in Indianapolis back in August. If you ever have the chance to attend a Tufte course or seminar, don’t hesitate (I was really surprised I didn’t see more people from the Indy design community there). Not a moment went by in which he wasn’t poignant, concise,and engaging. To top it off, every attendee received a copy of each of his four books.

There were more quotables in that eight hour course then you could shake a stick at. Here are a handful the choicest thoughts I took away:

• Don’t waste time visualizing information than doesn’t need it. People aren’t stupid.
• Never dumb things down.
• Overproducing information is dishonest and manipulative, and reveals a lack of performance.
• Don’t get original, get it right.
• Don’t hurt your credibility with metaphors.
• Legends and codes are the enemies of charts.
• Look to science for innovative visualizations (the world of business has largely failed at presentation because of a focus on “the pitch”).
• Document everything.
• Content counts most of all. Analytical presentations ultimately stand or fall depending on the quality, relevance, and integrity of their content.
• Get better data and content.

What impacted me the most from Tufte’s course, was the idea that if you’re having to dress up your content or data with superfluous visuals, not only are you making the content harder to decipher, you’re manipulating your audience in a negative way. This isn’t to say that your presentation shouldn’t look great (and possibly even glossy), just that it shouldn’t look great in an attempt to cover up irrelevance or unimportance.

It occurs to me that this is a great way test an idea or concept. If it’s not compelling in an unadorned state, and you spent more time trying to “trick out” the way it looks than you did on the idea itself, maybe it’s not a very good idea in the first place.