It’s Just Too Easy

After you’ve seen one visualization book, you’ve seen them all. They tend to all look similar, use the same examples, and don’t provide much depth. Is it too easy to write a book when you can use such compelling images?

I’m reading a visualization book right now, and I’m disappointed. I don’t even blame this particular book, they all kind of look the same: lots of images, many of them full-page and laid out well, but the text doesn’t go very deep or really provides much in addition to the image. Yes, there are exceptions; but the majority of books does exactly that.

Today I realized that I’m not just frustrated by this particular book, I’m frustrated by the entire class of visualization books. And that led me to an insight. There is a deeper problem.

To understand the issue, let’s talk about photography. Think of the books in the photography section of your local bookstore. What do they look like? Large images, many of them full-page and laid out well, with little text. I would wager a bet that most people never even read any of the text in these books. And why would they? Let the pictures speak and don’t get in the way.

Many visualization books are like that. They collect lots of great examples that the reader can spend a lot of time looking at and studying. Likewise, a collection of the greatest photographs of the last 100 years would not need much text. What is [...]