“This website attempts to walk you through the long and diverse history of a particular aspect of human endeavour: The translation of ideas, stories and concepts that are largely textual and/or word based into a visual format, i.e. visual communication.”

“A few years ago, at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, I noticed something strange on the departure boards. American Airlines had three flights scheduled that afternoon from ORD to Boston, and all were apparently operating on time. United, on the other hand, had three flights scheduled from ORD to Boston, but none were operating on time. In fact, all three United flights showed ‘canceled.’

I smelled a rat. I went to the United counter and asked the reason for the cancellations. ‘Weather.’”

Crazy dynamic whiteboard software and hardware. Watch through to the end — it’s not just about drawing.

Edward Tufte: “The iPhone platform elegantly solves the design problem of small screens by greatly intensifying the information resolution of each displayed page. Small screens, as on traditional cell phones, show very little information per screen, which in turn leads to deep hierarchies of stacked-up thin information–too often leaving users with ‘Where am I?’ puzzles. Better to have users looking over material adjacent in space rather than stacked in time.

To do so requires increasing the information resolution of the screen by the hardware (higher resolution screens) and by screen design (eliminating screen-hogging computer administrative debris, and distributing information adjacent in space).

This video shows some of the resolution-enhancing methods of the iPhone, along with a few places for improvements in resolution.”

This is not just “one to watch,” it’s two to watch! Awesome.

“An end of the season Layer Tennis Playoff Fiasco! Two matches at once! Anything can happen. Chris Glass vs Shaun Inman with commentary by John Gruber plus at the very same time Jason Koxvold vs James Hutchinson with commentary by the Dean of Layer-By-Layer Commentary, Rosecrans Baldwin. Coin flips coming. We’re declaring tomorrow a holiday. In-office drinking commences if and when one of the matches reaches Layer 7.”

“The adage that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is truer than ever on the Internet”

“Absolute genious. Compiled from the phishook forums. Let’s see how many you can figure out.”

“The new MFA in Design Criticism at the School of Visual Arts is now accepting applications for Fall 2008. This innovative two-year program trains students to research, analyze, and evaluate design and its social and environmental implications. Study with some of the best design writers and thinkers of our time, including: ‘Studio 360′ host and author Kurt Andersen; MoMA’s design curator Paola Antonelli; Pentagram partner and co-founder of Design Observer, Michael Bierut; former editor of I.D. Magazine Ralph Caplan; Metropolis contributing editor Karrie Jacobs; and architecture critic Philip Nobel.”

“Apple undeniably has great TV advertising with TBWA’s ‘Get a Mac’ spots, starring AdFreak favorite John Hodgman. As we mentioned previously, it’s also been extending its creative excellence to that most humble of vehicles, the Web banner. Today’s NYTimes.com continues Apple’s latest innovation of syncing up Web-display ads to work together to tell a story.”

“As good design further penetrates the Web, once highly-regarded conventions fall into disfavor and are replaced by more effective ones. Yet some flawed conventions persist. In fact, they persist on some pretty high-profile websites; to their detriment.”

“A few days, a few thousand dollars, a Mac and anyone can recreate the invasion of Normandy.”

Do all of this in 10 minutes:

“1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Tag it on flickr “CD Cover Meme”“

“Over the last few days, I’ve taken part in (and facilitated parts of) an intense workshop meant to define the user experience of a new product. In the room we had representatives from pretty much the entire team — software engineers, hardware engineers, industrial designers, interaction designers, marketing, brand, and even the CEO.

At the end of the first day, we found ourselves a little unmoored — even though we had talked about our presumed users (this project is to launch a brand new product into the market, so there are no existing users), the discussion was nebulous. We needed an anchor.

So on the morning of the second day we dove into a discussion of personas…”

“Don’t know really. Started out as something, ended up many other things. I’ve been eating a lot of figs recently. They’re good and ripe right now.”

In other words, this is a Flickr set of scans of someone’s wonderfully odd sketchbook.

“The gifts and paper goods of Knock Knock tap into the vernacular with their dead-on vintage aesthetic and thoroughly modern wit. Each snarky piece is lovingly concepted and written by founder Jen Bilik, who oversees Knock Knock’s design studio in Venice Beach. Bilik talks with Alissa Walker about answering her creative calling, reality TV and the beauty of overdue correspondence.”