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Can also recommend his book, Show me the numbers. A nice companion when you're done with Tufte.

Reminds me of Stephen Few's classic book, "Show Me the Numbers". Excellent book if you have to report information to others that must be quickly understood.

Yep. I love design and creative ideas, but they still have to be efficient.

This just makes me waste my time compared to a table where I can sort/filter by different criteria.

Most of the time, "creative" visualizations tend to actually obscure meaning, or worse, mislead viewers.

Recommended reading: Show me the numbers by Stephen Few (his blog is also great: http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/)

Information Dashboard Design - is definitely the first one you should read. It really gives a more high level overview of charting best practices and dashboard design.

Show me the Numbers - goes much more in depth about the details of the different chart types and visualization best practices. There's a chapter or two on each of the main chart types.

Now You See It - This is described as a companion book to Show me the Numbers and focuses on data analysis as opposed to pure visualization.

I would also recommend checking out Stephen Few's books (Information Dashboard Design and/or Show Me the Numbers) for quick and useful guidelines on visually communicating data. Few is a big advocate of Tufte's work and books, and he has a nice set of good vs bad practices in Information Dashboard Design.

I've been an evangelist for Few's books and practices as a "best" starting place for those of us less naturally gifted at data visualization (especially for simpler data or business purposes). He has heavily influenced how I look at typical IT charts and graphs.

I would recommend starting with Stephen Few's books: Show Me the Numbers and Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At-a-Glance Monitoring to get an idea of visualization from a business needs perspective. These are easy reads.

Few is heavily influenced (and cites) Edward Tufte - Tufte is probably the definitive reference for communicating data with visual techniques. If you are interested in pursuing scientific visualization, you probably need to spend some time with Tufte. I never have properly done this myself.

These sources will give you a solid foundation without being tied to specific tech. You'll probably find lots of libraries built on top of d3.js that implement the basic ideas of both authors. I have been meaning to look at data exploration examples (e.g., stuff with visualization examples in R) and translate to different front/backend. That might be neat too.

Build some examples where the visualization provides real insight to a defined business problem and you will probably score some new opportunities for yourself.

Good luck.