CONCEPT
Flatland
Tufte's term for the two-dimensional surface on which all information displays must exist — and the challenge of representing multidimensional reality without losing the dimensions that do not map naturally to horizontal and vertical position.
Flatland is the two-dimensional surface — the page, the screen — on which all static information displays must ultimately exist. The challenge of information design is to represent multidimensional data on this flat surface without losing the dimensions that exceed horizontal and vertical position. Tufte's term, borrowed from Edwin Abbott's 1884 satire, names both the constraint and the challenge: every good display is an escape from flatland, exploiting color, shape, size, texture, animation, small multiples, and the sequential structure of multiple displays to encode additional dimensions on a flat surface. Minard's Napoleon map escapes flatland with six dimensions on a single sheet. John Snow's cholera map escapes with three. The periodic table escapes with four. Each design finds a two-dimensional form that preserves the structure of the multidimensional data, using the visual variables available as additional representational axes.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The builder's intention is multidimensional in a precise, not merely metaphorical, sense. A software product has