Harmony is exactly what describes what good design is. It’s not just putting pretty pictures together with carefully crafted colors. It’s evaluating how those images, fonts, colors and textures exist within a space. Fonts are a good example of this. A good font is not so much the crafting of the letters, but rather the thoughtfulness given to the space around and particularly between the letters. They exist in a space together, rigid in place as though they belong there without excuse or explanation.

Nature is a wonderful source of inspiration for how elements of beauty can coexist and play off each other.

so, while i actually DO know how websites are built and designed, i also empathize with your fish-out-of-water feeling. power, sister.

~mike

Recently I’ve been fortunate to have read/am in the process of reading some really, really good books:
* Shantaram< by Gregory David Roberts (soon to be a movie directed by Mira Nair and starring Johnny Depp).
* The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles by Melissa Holbrook Pierson
* The Place You Love is Gone also by Melissa Holbrook Pierson
* Laurel Canyon:The Inside Story of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood by Michael Walker
* Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943 by Keith Lowe
* The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

All of these books not only tell wonderfully engaging (if often harrowing or horrifying) stories, they exhibit simply great writing. I mean, how can you not love a book that begins like this:

“From my mother I learned to write prompt thank-you notes for a variety of occasions,” Melissa Holbrook Pierson writes. “From Mrs. King’s ballroom dancing school I learned a proper curtsy and, believe it or not, what to do if presented with nine eating utensils at the same place setting…. From motorcycles I learned practically everything else.”

You can experience the Jamestown site here:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/jamestown/

hey great stuff…