WWW: Beyond the Basics

10. Graphical Design

10.1. Introduction

The World Wide Web has been hailed by many as perhaps the greatest revolution ever in the publishing industry. For the first time in history, the "common man" has been given the ability to distribute information to potentially thousands or even millions of people. In the past, such wide spread circulation could only be achieved by a select few who were judged worthy by editors and publishers. Now, anyone can be their own editor and their own publisher. All they need is an account with an Internet service provider and a few lessons in HTML.

Yet let us look back a few years to the last great publishing revolution. In the mid-80's, Desktop Publishing, or DTP, was creating a similar stir in publishing and computer circles. Here again was a technology that was giving laypersons the ability to do things that were previously reserved only for those with fancy printing presses and large design staffs. Now everyone could be their own designer and printer. All they needed was a computer, a printer, and a DTP package.

Sound familiar?

Of course, the problem with the DTP revolution became obvious very quickly. Yes, people had the tools to create all sorts of wonderful documents. Unfortunately, what they didn't have were the skills to use these tools effectively. The results were documents with 15 different fonts on a page, clip art images put in not because they were needed but just because there weren't any on the page yet, etc. The average user had little or no knowledge of the art of design, a subject to which many people devote their entire careers.

Today, we're seeing the same pattern played out on the web. While there are millions of pages available, many of them are poorly designed. Their lack of structure often makes them difficult to navigate. Large inline images are common, dramatically increasing page download times, but often producing a very weak visual effect. Animations run endlessly around the screen, distracting the reader from the actual content of the document, if there is any.

The web is passing through a phase almost identical to what DTP went through. Many people perceive it as a new toy. For this reason, they often do things on their web pages not because they need to but simply because they can. While this can be a fun and sometimes enlightening exercise, it does not make for good design.

In this chapter, we'll look at web design from three different perspectives. First, we'll examine how past work with hypertext navigation leads to suggestions for imparting an easily navigable structure upon a web document. Second, we'll pull some tips from printed media for making pages more visually appealing while enhancing their usefulness. Finally, we'll take a look at multimedia, the latest craze to hit the web, and examine its place in effective design.

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Copyright © 1996 Joseph W. Reiss, All Rights Reserved

Joe Reiss <jreiss@vt.edu>
Last modified: Sun Oct 27 18:53:04 1996