A great source that people presenting data all should read is The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte. I'm not sure I agree with everything in it, but it does have a lot of great insights. (Chart junk)

Hey! I must confess I haven't actually read those myself, although I did recently buy Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitive Information", on which the Tufte class is based I believe. If you eventually get into typography in general, I can't recommend "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst enough. It's rightly called the typographer's bible.

The typesetting service sprang from the modest success of LaTeX Templates. The large number of visitors meant that I had a constant stream of questions from individuals and businesses asking about modifying templates to include/change this or that. I did the whole free support thing for 1 or 2 years, but eventually realized it's a never-ending thankless task and I may as well try to capitalize on this desire that people have. Like with Creodocs, I had no idea whether anyone would pay me for this. The number of existing services was very small. I made the site and linked to it from LaTeX Templates, which is the perfect place to advertise, and eventually I started to get a trickle of clients. My rate initially was something like $30USD/hour, which was an insanely large amount for a poor PhD student, and I even remember a client saying I was way undercharging for the quality of work! As I've had more and more clients, I've built up the Showcase page to show off what the service is capable of, and I believe this is an important draw to give legitimacy to the service and show what LaTeX itself is capable of. I haven't asked, but I imagine most of my clients come from LaTeX Templates so the key for me has been to provide something for free and then upsell to a paid service. Nothing new there :)

The first time I heard of this idea was at an Edward Tufte* seminar. He researches and publishes on the design of presented information and how that impacts how it's communicated. His books, especially The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, are highly recommended.

* https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...

Metamathematics by Kleene. On Lisp by Graham. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Tufte.

> the ability to use a whiteboard boosts innovation

Beneath this simple statement is a career's worth of questions worth investigating. Oral and written communication are just two modes of conveying information and sharing ideas. Edward Tufte, for example, has made his career in exploring other modes, neatly summed up in the title of his most famous work, "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information".

Engaging the visual/spatial functions of the brain, even if you can't draw more than wobbly trapezoids and shaky, uneven lines, can enrich thinking in ways I don't think we fully understand.

I'm not sure what all the barriers are to an inexpensive shared whiteboarding tool that's as natural and effortless as a dry-erase pen on a whiteboard. Everything we have now feels unnatural without a lot of practice, is far too clunky to be worth the effort, and/or is too expensive and flakey.

I think part of it is that they begin with a draw/paint tool, rather than cutting it down to the extreme simplicity of whiteboard. Would whiteboarding be as popular and useful if you had to pick up a "draw a square" tool, then switch to "draw a line" tool? Can we make the pad/stylus for "draw lines" have better haptics and a more natural hand/eye connection?