Kelley Harris sent me class notes on presenting data, information. He suggests this wiki fares well by Tufte's advice.
Direction
Edward Tufte source 
He brought up a number of principles that confirm your SFW direction.
Put important stuff adjacent in space, vs. stacked in time.
Comparisons are best made adjacent in space vs. stacked in time. SFW's adjacent ges are very nice for comparing things.
Adjacent in space gives users the choice to prioritize.
Words and graphics should be easy to combine in the same place, and with the same ols.
The best way to show a little data is in sentences. (Save graphs for big data.)
Source everything used.
Authors only need 5-7 templates for presenting data. D3 is great
Google news as possible project template. The project members put the latest ports at the top, but older reports are still available.
Presentation is to aid users' thinking. (Bring in whatever it takes. Content-driven vs. process-driven.
He showed numerous examples of people using multiple computer monitors in order to get "info adjacent in space". e.g. NASA/JPL control rooms, Stock traders, etc He didn't say it, but maybe it's implied that when things are important, it's good to have more screen space.
It begs the question of why isn't most of what we do important enough to have more screen space ... The 4+ SFW panels may take on different feel when they're all 8.5 x 11".
He kept mentioning that screen resolution still lags far behind paper resolution, but that higher res is coming fast, and will matter.
He pointed out that the light intensities are important to allow distinguishing info. e.g. Google maps, and some maps of Switzerland. In contrast to a whole view of saturated colors, which loses the sense of relative importance.
Other
Use proven models. NY Times. Wall Street Journal ESPN sports summary of big gamesBaseball "box scores."
Get the content right. Don't worry about original design.
Zero Powerpoint
He recommends handing out an 11x17" paper folded to be four pages.
He asks attendees to read it first.
In a year attendees will be given iPads to follow, instead of handouts.
See PLOS Public Library of Science. See template for articles, especially the stracts. e.g. "Why Most
Publised Research Findings are False"
Moving from a hierarchy of nouns to a flatness of verbs.
Google Maps as a standard of info-rich. (Most viewed document in human history.)
Info is the interface. (Examples shown with no menus or anything. user interacts rectly with the info.)
His Sparklines may fit nicely on SFW. webpage
Journal of Nature has the best graphics.
Search in Google images vs. in word-based search, to get info faster.
Design should do no harm.
He made a Chrome plug in to create a quilted pattern of images. website