beyond that, i was accompanied by the famous alex "ajax" jackson. we got there pretty much the minute it started and found ourselves walking into a packed ballroom. fortunately we found two seats next to each other, in the front row! i was fascinated with everything – from 10am, when i received my four free edward tufte books, to the minute we got into the 45-minute-parking-structure-exit at 4:30pm. it was hard to label the crowd taking this course. mostly looked like sales people or middle-management of some sort. i noticed some people didn't blink to tufte's wisdom, while others allowed their ego to roll their eyes into a hollow head. all in all, i physically felt out of place amongst the dress shirts as i wore my shorts and slippers but was totally engaged mentally.
i took seven and a half pages of notes in my handy 2008 journal.
tufte managed to continually bag on PC users and microsoft — powerpoint, in particular — which was to my great delight. and he has a fairly crass attitude in general with the occasional self-indulged joke, but who can argue with the man, he's a genius. he explained 6 major principles of analytical design from his book, Beautiful Evidence (pg. 124), that are the highlights in my notes and are clearly something that i will take away and utilize as i pursue this glamorous (twisted) field of graphic design. he starts the chapter off with the ingenious and gorgeous map that Minard created to communicate napoleon's invasion on russia.
ajax and i each got one of our books signed.
here he is waiting patiently to have a question answered.
and here he is trying to grab Tufte's wrist watch. shady, i tell you. :)
i'm excited to dive into my new books including a book his mother wrote, "artful sentences: syntax as style."
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