Early infographic by Minard showing the French army's march, and then retreat, to & from Moscow, 1812-1813

I like how it shows visual indication of army size, their geographical route and position, as well as temperature at points on their journey, and all in one graphic. Just brilliant.

UPDATE: View the slides for Amir’s presentation on SlideShare

You can read more about his planned talk and workshop on Mark’s blog.

Here’s the review of Ann’s talk, from Robert at Boogdesign.

The talk was organised by Intelligence Squared, and you can view the video of highlights from Tufte’s talk on their website (if you pay that is).

My favourite point (as summarised by Intelligence Squared) is: “Data should be used to guide the design, rather than design being based on fashion or what the technology offers. Content-oriented design is necessary, as the point of information display is to assist analytical thinking.”

Some found his talk a little ‘rambling’ and complained that he was just reciting from his notes, however it’s worth noting that he is an academic, not a public speaker, so perhaps we should forgive him for such things! Any guru’s followers can often get weighed down with the minutiae of what they say, rather than focusing on the underlying principles they are attempting to communicate. It’s these key principles (such as the one mentioned above) that made the talk a success for me, as I think much of it reinforces my views on what good UX design should be. He had some very good examples and interesting graphics to illustrate his points (Minard’s the poster of Napoleon’s march on Moscow will end up on our wall!).

We failed, however, to get our copy of Tufte’s “The Visual display of Quantitative Information” signed by the author

Proves that plenty of people are still using the google.com website to search, and not just their browser add-ons/built-in search (Or maybe it just shows that the few people who still do, spread the word quickly!)

Did you play it? Did you? I bet you did…