Nice poster to buy

Get it from Flood the Valley.

Didn't find this myself - saw it first on a nice blog from and/or/if who are document designers I used to work with.

Favourite questions

Registering on a website today, I was asked to choose a security question from the following options:

Problem is:

• Don't know, and seems a bit late to ask now.
  
• If I pick one at random, would I pick the same one when I'm asked again. And, heck, it was 50 years ago.
  
• Heck, it was 50 years ago
  
• Heck, it was 50 years ago
  
• Heck, it was 200 years ago
  
• Which grandfather?
  

The Rupert principle

I sometimes find myself referring to a particular pattern of explanation as a Rupert, and this understandably puzzles people who didn't grow up in the UK at the time I did. Rupert Bear was a classic comic strip that was published in the Daily Express (and may still be, for all I know). It includes three parallel versions of the same story: a picture, a couplet, and a full text version. The combination allows different ways for children and parents to share the story, and is a classic pattern for information designers.
Here's what it looks like:

Born under a bad sign

If we had to choose a theme tune for simplification, what would it be? I'd pick Albert King's classic blues 'Born under a bad sign'. Apart from its obvious reference to poor wayfinding in maternity hospitals, it contains this lament for literacy:

I can't read.
I didn't learn how to write.
My whole life's been one big fight.

You can hear/get it at iTunes.