An Exercise in Gestalt
A friend and I were going over one of his recent business card designs, and I made a comment about how grouping and spacing affects the way elements on the page are perceived. He asked for clarification, and I said:
This is three dots:
o o o
...but this is a story:
o o o
A little gestalt goes a long way :-) I'm sure I got this from somewhere, probably Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. Tufte has a lot to say about these kinds of relationships also, though a specific citation eludes me at the moment.
UPDATE: If you're scratching your head thinking that the dots look exactly the same, it's because your RSS reader is messing up the formatting of the text. Sigh.
Beautifully put, David. And right on.