Intuitively we might think that the problem that clutter creates is confusion. ![]() You'll have to excuse the huge dump of text, but it implies some way of quantifying clutter in as much as identifying the consequences of clutter. Josef Albers, "One Plus One Equals Three or More: Factual Facts and Actual Facts," in Albers, Search Versus Re-Search (Hatford, 1969), pp 17-18. There, all sorts of unplanned and lushly cluttered interacting combinations turn up, with changing layers of information arrayed in miscellaneous windows surrounded by a frame of system commands and other computer administrative debris. Such patterns become dynamically obtrusive when our displays leave the relative consistency of paper and move to the changing video flatland of computer terminals. Joseph Albers described this visual effect as 1 + 1 = 3 or more, when two elements show themselves along with assorted incidental by-products of their partnership - occasionally a basis for pleasing aesthetics but always a danger to data exhibits. An omnipresent, yet subtle, design issue is involved : the various elements collected together on flatland interact, creating non-information patterns and texture simply through their combined presence. Amongst the most powerful devices for reducing noise and enriching the content of displays is the technique of layering and separation, visually stratifying various aspects of data.Įffective layering of information is often difficult for every excellent performance, a hundred clunky spectacles arise. ![]() Or, worse, to fault viewers for a lack of understanding. ![]() And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication. In Edward Tufte's brilliant Envisioning Information (Graphic Press, 1990) he states the following, in regards to clutter, in the opening paragraphs of Chapter 3 Layer and Separation:Ĭonfusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information.
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