“I love museums, and I’d like to see them become more like the Web. After ‘living’ on the Web day in and day out for years, any space that isn’t as interactive, customizable, and ‘deep’ as the Web is a bit frustrating to me.”

“All 1,943 Cornell Faculty were asked to respond to the following question: Of the many charts (graph, map, diagram, table and ‘other’) you have seen in your life, which has been the most important, remarkable, meaningful or valuable?” (Thanks Rebecca’s Pocket!)

“A lone man stands stock-still before an armored tank, daring it to move forward, small yet large in his defiance. That picture, a frozen moment from the student uprising in Tiananmen Square, resides indelibly in the minds of all who gazed upon the portrait of singular courage. But now try to remember the headline that accompanied the photograph displayed above the fold in the morning paper. Try to recall the caption below that defined the image, the body copy running in column inches beside and beyond that detailed the drama. Odds are all those hundreds of words, painstakingly selected, words that loaded the picture with meaning, put it into cultural context, have faded from thought, while the image remains. But fret not the forgetting; it is simply a part of the human condition. Because, as visually oriented systems, humans are programmed to store more pictures than text in their long-term memories.”

“Someone emailed me recently to point out that illustration isn’t included in Design Observer’s list of ‘categories’ — the list you can see below, on the right of your screen. Art, typography and photography are there, but not illustration. Is this omission a simple oversight, or does it tell us something significant about the current state of illustration?”

“I’ve come to believe that there are few things in the digital photography world that Photoshop can’t do better than most other programs. HDR turns out to be one of them. Photoshop CS2 has a little-known (it seems) built-in HDR assembler that, while lacking the “make my photo look like an acid-trip” tone-mapping features of Photomatix, is capable of creating extremely realistic or extremely surreal HDR images. I’ve been using Photoshop CS2 for most of my HDR images, and lots of people have been asking me what I do and how I do it. Wonder no more! It’s actually pretty easy. Let’s get started.”

“If you are a fan of pop art then you’re probably already well acquainted with the work Roy Lichtenstein. Roy Lichtenstein became one of the leading pop artists of the sixties with his comic-strip paintings. .. Benday dots were Lichtenstein’s trademark. Benday dots are a printing process which combines two (or more) different small, coloured dots to create a third colour. Back in the day, pulp comic books used benday dots in primary colours to inexpensively create the secondary colours such as flesh tone. You can create the benday dot effect by using the Colour Halftone filter found in Photoshop, however in this tutorial I’m going to show you a way to create a fantastic looking black and white Halftone Pattern. ‘Why?’, because I like the look of it better.”

“The computer keyboard helped kill shorthand, and now it’s threatening to finish off longhand. When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters. And those college hopefuls are just the first edge of a wave of U.S. students who no longer get much handwriting instruction in the primary grades, frequently 10 minutes a day or less. As a result, more and more students struggle to read and write cursive.”

“This is a tiny little site focused on the variation in the signs placed on the right rear of most trucks we see on the roads. You see, when large trucks make a right turn, they swing a little bit wide to the left first. Simple idea. Many ways to express it.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

“Some folks are asking this question. I’ve spent the past two years making the transition from designer to business consultant, jumping a lot of hurdles along the way. Here’s a little of what I learned…”

Publishers are starting to report an uptick in sales from Google Inc.’s online program that lets readers peek inside books, two years after the launch of its controversial plan to digitally scan everything in print. Google has been enlisting publishers to voluntarily submit their books so that Web searchers can more easily find titles related to their interests, but some fear the project could lead to piracy or exploitation of their copyrighted content. ‘Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers,’ said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press.”

“We live in a time where people have an amazing amount of power when it comes to publishing. Blogging, podcasts, vidcasts (or whatever you call ‘em) and more have been put into the hands of millions and it’s changing the way we live and work. Despite all of that, content management for the web remains a huge pain point for many individuals and businesses. The amount of time, effort and money that’s involved (and often wasted) to do things that are seemingly rather straightforward is astronomical. I mean, how hard does it have to be?”

“Frames evolved from the borders which appeared 3-4,000 years ago on vase and tomb paintings, and later on mosaics, enclosing narrative scenes and decorative panels. Early Christian art adapted these to the carved edgings of ivory book covers and diptychs, and finally of altarpieces. By this time the function of the frame had changed: not merely a decorative boundary, it protected and emphasized the work it held, and might have a strongly symbolic aspect.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

“1. ‘Do this one cheap (or free) and we’ll make it up on the next one.’ No reputable business person would first give away their work and time or merchandise on the hope of making it up later. Can you imagine what a plumber would say if you said ‘come in, provide and install the sink for free and next time we’ll make it up when we need a sink.’ You would be laughed at! Also the likelyhood is that if something important came along, they wouldn’t use you.”

Wow, these posters are awesome. “We produce and design all the posters in-house. You won’t find these anywhere else! If you are interested in a bigger size poster (18″ x 24″ or larger) or have *any* other questions, email us.” (Thanks a.wholelottanothing.org!)

“This recipe is one of many that I am developing and is a work in progress. The eventual aim is to have a website that allows users to select the mode in which the content is presented (ie: pure words, pure images and a range of options in-between combining word and image). The idea stemmed from reserach I did into human information processing, where I learnt that all users prefer to process information in their own way. Some will love this wordless version — while others will prefer supporting words.”