Designing for electronic print

Viewing the Web: Is print dead?

I was once a Web outsider—knew it existed, had no interest in getting hooked up. As a desktop publisher—I found it vaguely threatening. Everyone, so I read, had to have a "home page" (whatever that was) and many of them were pronounced seriously ugly by the experts.

Now, several years later, I make my profession on the Internet. I create home pages. As I casually "surf" through as many as 100 sites per day, I've found the Web exciting, informational, ever-changing, convoluted, disorganized, and yes, sometimes ugly.

I've seen the potential for profit—and I know people are using it for "community building." The Web's potency is its immediacy. It brings global issues and experiences right to your personal computer.

But its downside is the same immediacy—here at last is a tool for instant communication, and too many organizations WANT TO COMMUNICATE "NOW!!!"

Note how almost illegible those last four words are. As graphics professionals, you understand the importance of readability standards and the traditional tools used to create a visual message that enhances the written message.

Is the Web print? To many Web site creators, the impact of print standards is seen as not important, not useful, not even aesthetic. The MTV "10-second visual bite" techno-trash look is perceived as valid despite the much slower grasp of the World Wide Web.

Speedy semi-legible "stuff" may work for 30-second youth-oriented commercials, where the important factor is making sure viewers remember the sponsor's name or the product's identity. But on the Web (except maybe for users with outrageously-high per-minute connect charges), people have time to examine the site's message in more depth.

In short, the Web is simply another form of print—that is, of communicating effectively. It replaces the paradigm of turning pages by hand with turning pages by clicking the mouse. Sometimes pages take more than one or two screens and viewers must scroll down. Sometimes pages take a long time to compose on screen (too many graphics, too big graphics).

But the end result is a page which forces—or should force—people to "read" it. Just like in magazines, when the act of reading is too difficult, people will skip the message.

A wonderful resource, especially when you're first learning web design, is Web Pages That Suck http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com. The whole site is devoted to explaining WHY things don't work or why they violate commonly held readability issues/perceptions.

Published in Advertising Production Association newsletter.