I'm a hacker and a coder from way back. When I first started created digital imagery, back in the late 1970s, there was barely any commercial hardware, in the m

I'm a hacker and a coder from way back. When I first started created digital imagery, back in the late 1970s, there was barely any commercial hardware, in the modern sense, and essentially no commercial software. We dug out the math and physics books and rolled our own. My background is in fine arts; my degree is in painting, drawing and print making. Image making is a very old technology. Leonardo's notebooks have a lot of good advice for modern web designers. So do the 19th century impressionists. Add in the fact that I'm an amateur astronomer with an interest in optics and the human visual system, and I've got a pretty useful toolbox for making things that people need to look at. I read the article you mention, and thought it was cute. What a lot of web developers don't realize is that if your visual design doesn't work, then that's one thing that's broke about your project. Visual design doesn't necessarily mean "pretty" or "pleasing to the eye", though that never hurts. Visual design means that your work is communicating correctly and efficiently. Think about designing a billboard or a 10 second TV commercial. You've got a very narrow window of opportunity to grab someone's attention, amidst all the other distractions, get your message across, and hopefully initiate some kind of action or memory response. The biggest problem with some designers is that in order to perform in a highly competitive environment they have to become very specialized and attuned to a particular medium and a particular set of requirements. If they've never worked in other mediums they may think that the specialized rules and needs of their medium are general rules. I've seen print designers create billboards that would look beautiful in a magazine spread, but would be a messy blur on the side of the highway as you went zooming past. I've worked in print, broadcast, movie special effects, animation, multi-media, display, web, charcoal, oil and acrylic paint, silkscreen, wood engraving, copper plat etching, and other even weirder mediums. I once had to design an ad that was to be silk screened onto walnuts. Now there's a tricky venue to master ... Back when I was teaching design and web development, one thing I would stress was that anyone working in a visual medium ought to learn to draw. Get Betty Edward's book Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain and go to town. Learning to draw observationally is learning to see; and to see the whole picture, not just the part that happens to be under your pencil at the moment. If you can't draw it that means you aren't really seeing it; you are merely recognizing it.