We will refer to a number of books over the course of the semester.
You will not need to purchase any books for this class. The required readings will be provided online. Of course, you might want to buy some of the books if you want to support the authors, read beyond what is required for class, or like owning physical books.
There are a few other books that we’ll pull a chapter from. Not enough to warrant you buying them for class, but if you like what you read in the chapters, please support the authors by buying books. If readers stop buying books, authors will stop writing them.
You may notice that most of these books do not have much “practical” stuff (like how to program visualizations, or how to use some tool). These kinds of topics change quickly, so books tend to be out of date by the time I find them. Also, the best resources for these kinds of things tend to be online.
This is the closest thing to a “primary textbook” for the class. The course shares a similar philosophy to the book, and we’ll read most of the chapters. The UW library has electronic copies, so you do not need to buy it.
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Alberto Cairo is a designer and journalist who has become a visualization educator. He has written some excellent books on visualization. We will use excerpts from his books *The Functional Art" and “The Truthful Art” in class.
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This is a thin little book (I know several people who read it in one sitting) that discusses the psychology of visual perception and its relationship to visualization and design. It’s not very deep, but its a great place to get started in appreciating how understanding how we see can help us be better designers.
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Edward Tufte’s books are probably the most famous (or infamous) books on visualization. They are more art history books, full of historical examples and commentary, then books to help you understand or design visualizations. However, they are very influential, and everyone in the field (and many people outside of the field) talk about them. We’ll look at parts for class.
Read more…Students often ask for resources on Graphic Design. I’ll suggest two books that have been readings in class in the past (and might be this year if we do the Graphic Design module): “The Non-Designer’s Design Book” and “Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty.”
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Jacques Bertin was a French cartographer who had lots of ideas about visualization, before there was a field of visualization. Many of the ideas we use in visualization today can be seen in his work, although reading these “original sources” can be challenging.
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