A Crash Course in Information and Visual Design

It gives a good overview of the topics that made me want to learn more about them. I think some links to resources for further information after each section would be very useful for someone using this article as a starting point.

I'm looking into organization of elements so the final formation is pleasing, visually and in other ways. Coming from an engineering background, I had no idea where to start. This helps a lot, thanks!

Would also appreciate any other pointers/links/books/courses you'd recommend, just finished reading the Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda.

Thanks! It's a great intro. Have any suggestions for online resources to use to go from newbie to novice designer?

I see three main reasons.

1. The web has its origins in the world of research and academia where most publications have at most 2 columns and usually only one. The current "newspaper/magazine" trend and the challenges associated with it and large display sizes are quite recent.

2. In the early 90s, the average display size was 800x600. At that size, a line of text set at 14px contained roughly 100 characters. Nobody really felt the need for shorter lines. Besides, newspapers don't lay out their content in columns because of legibility concerns but because it makes cutting and moving (parts of) articles easier an improves the general flexibility of their composition. And that's good for advertising, too.

3. Back to the origins of the web, one of the main design goals of its creator was to create a medium that was as independant of the client as possible. From that point of view, columns seem to be quite difficult to execute well. But of course, most of today's web doesn't really fit in their original view.

I would assume your guess is right. You have infinite room to scroll on a browser where you don't on a newspaper.

Thanks ndunn2. When I built the commenting system, I figured that asking people for the bare minimum information from their twitter account would be enough to get them to sign up, but it really seems I was wrong. I worried anon posts would result in too many "stfu nigger fag" type comments, and didn't want to give up any design to Disqus. And sign-up on the site I figured was too much of a hastle. Ugh......