Practical Advice on Interface Design

Erik D. Kennedy offers up 7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI (Part 1) & Part 2. Good and practical advice throughout, but I especially like this from the Introduction:

If you went to art school or consider yourself a UI designer already, you will likely find this guide some combination of a.) boring, b.) wrong, and c.) irritating. That’s fine. All your criticisms are right. Close the tab, move along.

I immediately went from reading with a grain of salt to disarming and digging in. Well done.

The methods for laying text over an image strike me as especially useful.