Category: design

  • Blog Design Study

    Smashing Magazine present their findings of their study of top blogs. Part 1 discusses layout design and typographic settings. Part 2 discusses navigation design, information architecture, advertisements and functionality (RSS-feeds, tag clouds, pagination, etc). What Smashing Magazine has to say about their study: We have identified 30 design problems and considered solutions for each of…

  • Putting the Learner in the Driver’s Seat

    Ever notice that a long trip is seems shorter when you’re the one driving? When I’m a passenger and I don’t have anything to distract me, I feel like a trip can go on forever. But when I’m behind the wheel, my mind is constantly engaged, thinking, processing and deciding. I actually prefer driving a…

  • When Did We Forget How to Draw?

    In a recent blog post on Visual Thinking, George Siemens wrote: I’m not a visual person. Ok, not totally true. I’m a visual person, but I lack skills to express myself visually. He then provided a great link to Joan Vinall-Cox’s article on Visual Literacy and Visual Thinking. I wanted to thank him on his…

  • If an Image is Worth a Thousand Words, How Much is an Animation Worth?

    Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D. recently published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled The Collective Dynamics of Smoking in a Large Social Network. What is fantastic with this article published online is that there is a page with supplementary material containing an animation entitled: Dynamic…

  • The 7 Levels of Artful Facilitation

    From Be a Multi-Dimensional Facilitator: Artful facilitation requires awareness and action at all levels: physical, thinking, emotional, intuitive, energy, spiritual and synergistic. Fantastic tips on how to be an effective facilitator. Reference: Be a Multi-Dimensional Facilitator | The Center for Graphic Facilitation | Steve Davis | 19 June 2008

  • Visual Display of Information

    A few years ago, I discovered Edward Tufte, who has been writing about how to efficiently display information. Here are 2 exerpts from The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) – click the images to enlarge. I was thoroughly impressed with the multiple examples of clever mix of text and images. It made me reflect…