27th
June
2008
“People are poor at accurately judging areas; they do much better comparing linear measures like the lengths of a bar or the heights of a point. Areas can be useful where precision’s not important—circles can be scattered over a map, for example, to allow readers to scan for trends. But too often designers indicate data with areas because shapes are cooler than lines and you can arrange them in pretty patterns.
Regardless of the shape chosen, because we have a hard time judging areas, it’s vitally important that sizes are calculated accurately: namely, proportional to the value they represent. Otherwise the designer is telling lies.”
posted in Information graphics | Permalink |
27th
June
2008
Rick Poynor: “Stefan Sagmeister’s latest book may reveal as much about the state of graphic design as it does about its compelling author.”
posted in Books, Graphic design | Permalink |
27th
June
2008
“Scientists have been interested in the movements of our eyes while reading for forty years. However, until now most assumed that when we read both eyes look at the same letter of a word concurrently.
Now ground-breaking research by cognitive psychologist Professor Simon Liversedge and his team at the University of Southampton has shown that this is not actually the case. They found that our eyes are actually up to something much more exciting when we read — our eyes look at different letters in the same word and then combine the different images through a process known as fusion.”
posted in Eye tracking, Learning | Permalink |
27th
June
2008
“If you are like I, you are pretty sick of reading articles about how the financially-troubled newspaper industry is making desperation budget cutting moves: Downsizing its products, laying off staff, buying prostitutes for advertisers, and so forth. But believe me, you’d be even sicker of it if you were INSIDE a typical American newsroom these days, where it’s sometimes hard to hear over the 200 decibel background drone of human whining.
One frequent newsroom complaint is that they are cutting back drastically in the use of copyeditors. It’s true, but I for one am not complaining. I say good riddance.”
posted in Journalism, Language | Permalink |
