Apparently someone told bloggers that adding pictures to your posts helps make things easier to read. Unfortunately, what they forgot to mention is that the pictures should actually be part of the message or at least tangentially related. Take for instance this post by Joel Spolsky about UI design and alarm clocks. Scattered through the article are pictures of random buildings, including for some unknown reason one with a sign reading “Cemetery for Soldiers’ Dogs”. Wouldn’t pictures of alarm clocks make more sense? What about a frustrated old woman? A sleep deprived man? All these things would actually relate to the content and perhaps enhance the message the post is trying to make. Buildings however only distract from the actual message – particularly quizzical things like a cemetery for soldiers’ dogs.

Of course, Joel isn’t the only one, his post is just what pushed me over the edge to blog about it. It doesn’t matter how cool you think the shadows or reflections are, if the image isn’t related to the actual content it’s just wasting bandwidth.