Oatmeal is great. If you have never saw his comics, you are missing out. Today's comic on "what I want from a restaurant" is another classic. All web designers should show this to their clients. It argues clearly for "functional website". Visually pretty website is nice, but do not trade it for function.

Answer the most important question: What information does your website visitors want?
Give them the information -- your website is not sticky if the visitor leaves immediately instead of trying to find the information buried somewhere
Do not get in their way -- putting text in images, no matter how pretty, prevent people to copy and paste the text.

Reserve the Oatmeal book

You can watchMatthew Inman talks about his comic in this Ignite presentation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYyJZOHgpco