Not a dumb question at all. I left my Tufte books at the office, so I can't check, but I thought he cited sources throughout. Either way, between Cleveland, Ro

Not a dumb question at all. I left my Tufte books at the office, so I can't check, but I thought he cited sources throughout. Either way, between Cleveland, Robins, Few, and Ware there're tons of studies and references: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/departments/sia/wsc/index.html http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/departments/sia/wsc/index.html http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/2028337238_Naomi_B_Robbins http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/2028337238_Naomi_B_Ro... http://www.perceptualedge.com/library.php http://www.perceptualedge.com/library.php http://www.amazon.ca/Visual-Thinking-Design-Colin-Ware/dp/0123708966/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1416357984&sr=8-2&keywords=colin+ware http://www.amazon.ca/Visual-Thinking-Design-Colin-Ware/dp/01... Better is subjective though and related to what you're trying to do. A lot of past research was about efficiency of information transfer. There's more recent research looking at memorability. In one report, different graphics could have both goals. There's a "Useful Junk" paper delving into that topic. There's a link to it in Few's reply: http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/the_chartjunk_debate.pdf http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intel... There's plenty more. Stanford Vis group is a fun place to check from time to time: http://vis.stanford.edu/ http://vis.stanford.edu/ Heer specifically has a range of papers and some online slides for a vis course he taught http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~jheer/ http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~jheer/ (uses Tufte for the course text) I'm drawing a blank on a few others I find informative... Unfortunately, I don't have any about fonts but I'm sure there are plenty out there.