       It's simple. Pictures are supposed to go right side up -- so, do the opposite. And text? Cut it up, let it run into pictures, or over into the next column on the page, last letter hopping over the well to kiss first letter. In Ray Gun, the static page took on the dynamism of change, a frame, frozen, retaining the residue of motion. Designers looked at Ray Gun and came away either hating it or loving it. There was no tepid middle.
It is motion which binds the televisuals of Ray Gun with the stately elegance of Edward Tufte's work. But where motion creates emotion in the hands of David Carson, in Tufte's lexicon, motion animates reason. Motion is a function of time, and it is time which Tufte tries to capture on paper. Practically every illustration in Visual Explanations shows the passage of time. If there is a magazine that epitomizes the Tufte style of design, it might be The Economist, which adheres to the Tufte-axiom that "in the architecture of content, the information becomes the interface."
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Ray Gun Issue #3, 1993
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