Some dots were never meant to be connected. But doing exactly that — taking a bunch of “dots” from one field of interest and applying them to another — is often a door opener to valuable new insights and ideas.

More often than not, a simple shift in context is all it takes to realize the benefits.

I did a Google search over the weekend, for example, on “Bauhaus Design Principles” to refresh how I’ve been thinking about the layout of PowerPoint slides. One of the search results was a paper titled Photoshop Album 2.0: Ten Design Principles from Outside the Software Industry by Johnnie Manzari. Reading through the principles, I let my mind wander to other topics where these ideas might also apply — and apparently found the experience rewarding enough to blog about it.

Here are the principles:

1. Success or failure is in the interpretation of the problem
2. Make the most from the least
3. Use symbols and relationships to unlock beauty and elegance
4. Cut the noise
5. Prevent graphic style from overtaking the presentation of data
6. Make the difficult accessible
7. Avoid long lines of horizontal text
8. Be disciplined about the use of typefaces
9. Use ornament cautiously and deliberately
10. Fundamentally, be concerned with how, and not with what

From writing code to developing presentations to setting up a new blog or finding an interesting topic to tweet on, it’s interesting to notice how nuances can shift — or even take on new meaning — in relation to different contextual settings.

Clicking on another link in my search results, up came a quote from Harry S Truman: “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” And so it goes when combining Web surfing with an open mind.