Why Gas Prices Are Out of Any President’s Control
Candidates for the White House should be judged on areas where a president can effect change, but the surge in gas prices isn’t one of them, says Richard H. Thaler.
Freakonomics
My Target-Date Fund Is Bigger Than Yours
Makeup: Caviar-Infused Designer Lipsticks Will See Us Through The Recession(via @Jezebel)
Estée Lauder chairman Leonard Lauder’s claim that lipstick sales rise during a recession has been disproven, but overall there has been a 9% increase in sales of high-end cosmetics since last year despite the economic downturn.
1950s Avon advertisement.
There WILL be tears…
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
Grid Theory- Has to do with the concept of dividing the elements of a composition (in our case, the web page) in order to achieve proportion and balance for the content, in addition to ensuring that the things used to create the content are square and line up in an aesthetically pleasing way.
Design Principles - In addition to Balance (symmetrical and asymmetrical), other design principles that are important to good web design are Unity and Emphasis.
Unity has to do with the way that different elements in a composition interact with each other. The goal is for the layout to viewed as whole rather than a bunch of disjointed pieces. We can achieve unity with the use of proximity and repetition.
Emphasis is about drawing the viewer’s attention to a particular object or portion of the content. Emphasis can be achieved with the use of the right placement, continuance, isolation, contrast, and proportion. The idea behind continuance is that our eyes tend to stay focused on a current object of interest as we move from left to right until something else draws our attention. An item that stands out from all the rest in isolation will draw the viewer’s attention. Contrast is yet another way to draw attention to an object by putting the desired object in juxtaposition with another object that is very different (complementary colors are an example). And finally, the use of proportion allows us to draw attention to an object by placing it off its scale (smaller or larger than that of the object).
Bread and Butter Layouts
Left-column navigation: This is the standard. The navigation links are placed in the first “third” of the vertical page with the rest of the content sitting in the next two thirds of the page.
Right-column navigation: The main site navigation is placed on the last third of the vertical page on the right. This method is not as common but it’s very intuitive for western cultures that read from left to right.
Three-column navigation: Has a wide center column with content held by two side navigational columns.
