Sunday, March 11, 2007

Parallelism & Multiples

After reading Chapter 5 on Parallelism I realized that there are parallels all around us. They can be seen in sculpture, science, music, typography, shapes, numbers, pictures, diagrams, etc. Parallels are used to help people learn. They help people analyze, compare and contrast things. Also, parallels create organization, rhythm and balance. As human beings, when things are organized they help people learn more easily because things are orderly and easy to follow.

Similarly, in Chapter 6, Tufte discusses how multiples depict direct comparisons and help viewers analyze and differentiate between things. The advantage to multiples is that it can portray movement when drawn out. For example, when viewing a card trick on paper the hand gestures change in each step along with the card positions, which ultimately displays motion. In this case, space replaces time. On the other hand, the disadvantage to multiples, if displayed incorrectly, can project false groupings. For example, if there are ten images of different landscapes placed next to each other and eight are colored and two are in black and white, your eyes would automatically want to compare the two b&w images to each other, when in reality all the images are supposed to be compared/contrast to each other. It is obvious that multiples are very versatile and helpful when it comes to learning.

Overall, parallelism and multiples are used to create organization in order to help viewers learn, analyze and compare things in their daily lives.

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