“The McSweeneyís phenomenon is a force to be reckoned with in American graphic design. It began as ñ and still is ñ an online journal with an admirably understated visual presentation: while website designers worked themselves into grand mal seizures of hyperactivity in the late twentieth century, McSweeneys.net never abandoned its plain vanilla format. But it was when founder Dave Eggers moved into the world of conventional publishing with McSweeneyís Quarterly Concern that the design world took notice. Simultaneously intricate and restrained, the dense-packed all-Garamond pages of the Quarterly refracted Victorian foppishness through a prism of ironic cool, and provoked Andrew Blauvelt to take to the pages of Eye to proclaim the arrival of a new movement: Complex Simplicity.”

“This is a pretty arbitrary list of landmarks in the history of information (whatever those might be), which I compiled for the Encyclopedia Britannica with the historian Daniel Brownstein.” (Thanks kottke.org)

“This year’s PDN Photo Annual presents the year’s most outstanding images from photographers, magazines and agencies that put a human face on the times we live in. From Lynsey Addario’s arresting images of the demonstrations in Iraq and Turkey to Taryn Simon’s stunning portraits of the wrongly accused to Mitch Epstein’s story of his family’s crumbling business ñ these are the images of our times.”

And in response to the previous link: “Not content to have a permalink for each paragraph with an annoying visible hash mark, I have decided to invent a new extreme form of blog clutter. I call them Pink Numbers, and I found this great unobtrusive graphic to represent them. Just click on any pink heart to link directly to its associated word.”

“Until this weekend Iíd never heard of ìPurple Numbersî but theyíve been across the radar twice in the last day, first in some commentary by Chris Dent on the Atom-Identifier issue, then again over at Jonas Lusterís place… I look at these things and the idea of sticking a visible anchor on each paragraph to make it addressable seems like, well of course! In particular here at ongoing where Iím prone to write thirty-paragraph rambles with multiple allegedly-related arguments, it would make Mark Pilgrimís life so much easier if he could directly point at a paragraph thatís particularly wrong. The more I think about this, the more it seems like every paragraph on the Web should have its own address. I also like the soft unobtrusive purple, #c8a8ff. But I donít like the numbers.”

“It would come as a great surprise to the bulk of the philosophers surveyed in this book that their ruminations form a philosophy of branding, one that offers counsel to marketers. Summarizing, or at least skimming over, the main points of thinkers ranging from Heraclitus to Popper, Thom Braun, director of the Marketing Academy at the Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever, argues that their insights on grandiose matters ó existence, say, or truth or God ó serve well for evaluating products and consumers’ responses to them and their marketing.”

“My hypothesis is that people who live in the intersection of social worlds are at higher risk of having good ideas. Qualifications come immediately to mind, but the gist of the hypothesis is familiar and makes intuitive sense: ways of thinking and behaving are more homogenous within than between groups, so people connected to otherwise segregated groups are more likely to be familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving ó which gives them the option of selecting and synthesizing alternatives.”

“For the sake of not repeating information contained in this article, suffice it to say I recommend designers allow themselves to be inspired by other creations as often as necessary. Although controversial since the day it was first published, the article isnít an advocate for plagiarism (copying the outcome) but rather for emulation (copying the inspiration).”