Rules Schmules

Who of you out there have ever said to yourself "if it's online, it must be true." Or, at the very least, who thought it subconsciously? Did you? I think that perhaps this thinking affects my responses to some online content, but recently, when I was debating what I'd like to write to you about this time, and landed on one of my favorites - mirrors - what I found online kept prompting me to utter an audible "what?!?!" So, here is a sample of the kind of advice you can find online, and how wrong it can be.

http://www.invitinghome.com/, in their article on Positioning Mirrors, states, "Mirrors should always be hung strictly vertically." Well *huff* what about the rectangular gold-leafed mirror that my grandmother gave me? Every time I've ever hung that on the horizontal, it was wrong? Well, why then did it look so right? Take a look at this fabulous "Darwin" mirror from Uttermost (a fantastic resource for accents) - personally, I think it's even a bit more interesting placed on the horizontal.

I'm a firm believer that aesthetic rules in design can be fun to break. And, furthermore, anyone who relies on "rules" is struggling with a lack of creativity. I'm not trying to step on toes here, and certainly not referring to functional rules, affecting ergonomics and the like. But even pinpointing color forecasts for the year ahead? Well, that's a shot in the dark, in my opinion.