I am sure many of you have already seen this picture – it’s been floating around the email circuit for a while. I got sent it again recently, and realised what a lovely illustration it is of human nature at work. Whether painting road markings or building a rocket, we are often tempted, and do, take little shortcuts.

Despair Inc.™: An Honest Org Chart on ZDNet.

Well worth a look, and a laugh, and of course a think.

Thanks to Mark Swivel.

John Fortune and John Bird on the subprime hoo-hah:

And here are my thoughts on this:

Business decisions made by a relative few affects the lives of many.
Much irrational emotions and “sentiments” underlie these decisions. These are unquantifiable. And yet much of the overt discussions are still based around tables of numbers. And many know the power of a …

From Dark Roasted Blend.

Spotted on Gizmodo:

Embarrassing mistakes like this could have been easily avoided had there been some level of diverse/alternate/wider/real-world thinking amongst those involved in the product development.

I came across this website which really how not to do a first contact experience on the web.

Here’s the engagement process:

1

When I first arrived, there was a blank area in the middle of the page. So I started reading the text on the right.

2

Suddenly this Flash element appeared, and pushed the text off to the right. How rude!

Now I couldn’t read …

This sign has been up in one of my local shopping centres now for months. Every time I walk past it I want her to adjust her shorts. It surely cannot be comfortable with the fabric wedged in like that…

Did anyone check the photo before the sign went to print?

moar funny pictures

Ok ok there is a point to this…

Engaging the user’s eye/mind to fill in the missing details is a great technique used by designers to add interest and “movement” to a piece of work – be it a graphical composition, an object …

A sign spotted in Perth recently:

Got this via email today (thanks Sandra!):

I can just see how this would have happened.

The brief comes into the graphic design studio. “We need a graphic that is X wide and Y high.”
The designers slave away for a while, working to the stated proportions. The designers may not know, or even care, what the display context of the graphic is. Hey, a graphic is a …