Flatland

The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?
-Tufte, Envsioning Information, Page 9

In Edward Tufte’s Envisioning Information, he popularizes the concept of “flatland” and outlines a variety of strategies by which data graphics might escape its confines to make a greater impact on the multivariate world. The book, along with the others in the Tufte suite, has had a profound impact on the world of design. This series of essays will show how Tufte’s flatland can have equally profound implications when applied to the world of web startups.

Escape from Flatland

Escaping this flatland is the essential task of envisioning information — for all the interesting worlds (physical, biological, imaginary, human) that we seek to understand are inevitably and happily multivariate in nature. Not flatlands.
-Tufte, Envsioning Information, Page 15

Tufte’s flatland is a metaphor for the printed page / computer screen which, regretably, is the primary medium through which desiginers of data graphics must communicate their message. Flatlands are problematic because they lack dimensionality and are marked by an abundance of constraints. To “escape flatland”, the designer must create something that reaches beyond those constraints and connects with the real world of experience.

The resulting challenge is one of translation. The author must translate an enigmatic data set into a form more easily understood by the viewer. A graph that has successfully escaped flatland reads more like a data story than it does a data set and establishes an alignment of understanding between the author and viewer. The best of these “stories” use that alignment to induce the action or illicit the emotion desired by the author.

For creators of data graphics, this desired action or emotion can vary widely. For entrepreneurs, however, there are a couple actions that are almost universally desired. Every entrepreneur needs smart people to join their team and investors to invest in their idea. In order to bring about these actions, the entrepreneur is forced to translate his / her idea into a form more understandable by others using the medium of a flatland. And that, my dear readers, is the subject of the next essay.