Today in Chartjunk
Graphic from "Los Angeles museums on the cusp of a new golden age," The Art Newspaper , Feb. 26, 2026 Edward Tufte made a career railing against this kind of pop infographic. Not only does The Art Newspaper 's chart perpetuate a stale stereotype (Los Angeles = palm trees!) but it distorts and obscures data behind an irrelevant picture. Wrote Tufte: "The use of two (or three) varying dimensions to show one-dimensional data is a weak and inefficient technique… The number of information-carrying (variable) dimensions depicted should not exceed the number dimensions in the data." Below, Tufte's most famous example of what a chart should not be ("chartjunk"). Nigel Holmes, chart for Time magazine
