The Tyranny of the Visual – “At first, one is tempted to claim that spatial considerations are common in stories. For example, the Odyssey is at heart a story of a journey around the Mediterranean. Isn’t that fundamentally spatial? …The best evidence we have for the chimeric nature of spatial factors in story is the…more

How can you make a standard web page into a conversation? By allowing people to talk back, of course! Allow them to “fisk” the page; to add a note or two via a toolbar (like Google’s); to add a comment to a centrally-hosted commenting site. How about a site that just collects comments on other…more

Conversational Metaphor – conversation as a viable approach to computer design: “But the hard reality is that a conversationalist entertainer must always have an audience of one, and it’s pretty hard to make money with such a tiny audience. So conversation never developed as an entertainment form…But now we have a technology that eliminates the…more

From The Paradox of Choice – “Gilbert and Wilson note that there is one exception to the rule that hungry people overbuy and sated people underbuy at supermarkets: it

NBS: IA as Conversation – “The reader is ultimately interacting with the designer. This interaction happens via the content. With all the technology and information before us, it’s easy to forget this interaction is about people talking to each other.”

ColorBrewer – Selecting Good Color Schemes for Maps – and charts, and graphs, etc..

EasyRGB – Match your RGB and color data with paint, inks, color cards and more. – creates “harmonies” in HTML color hex codes; very useful!

Rob Roy Kelly Courses: A Mini Course in Color – great little exercises to learn color theory by doing it

Gapers Block – A site about Chicago, IL – beautiful jam-packed newpaper layout

Graphic Design Contract Sample Three – another good freelance contract; with portfolio rights