Amos Satterlee has written an interesting short essay discussing the origins and trends of link art as well as analyzing what makes a successful banner and what fails. I like the fact that he rates the success of the banner on how well it survives in a field of other banners on a link page as well as its own composition.

And, yes, Amos does display a couple of mine—and made them active links back to my site which is how I discovered his essay in the first place. He did ignore the one I think is the weakest in a field of banners. Honestly, it was something I didn’t consider as I designed it—I hadn’t previously seen such a layout until I track-backed people using my link art. It clearly needs a redesign, and someday
I might actually get to it.