From reference to narration: Adapting Edward Tufte’s minimalistic principles to modern day information visualization goals

This is a critique of Edward Tufte’s minimalistic design principles. In it I consider the goals of visualizations in Tufte’s time. I suggest that while Tufte’s principles were appropriate for the scientific, reference-oriented visualizations of the 1980s, they oversimplify the narrative goals of the sophisticated narrative visualizations commonly published by today’s news outlets. I draw from the science of visual processing to suggest some ways which we might adapt his criteria for today’s world.