I recently bought 79 Short Essays on Design (which is awesome by the way). One of the articles that really talked to me was this one called The Mysterious Power of Context.

“We decided to recommend a straightforward sans serif font. Predictably, this recommendation was greeted by complaints. It was too generic, too mechanical, too unstylish, too unrefined. I had trouble responding until I added two more elements to the presentation.”

Does this look stylish to you? Does it communicate anything about fashion or taste?

The next slide…

Now what do you think?

It worked every time.

I’ve really enjoyed reading this book so far, and because they are short essays, you can pick it up and read a section in just a couple of minutes.