Web Log Costa Blanca

In what I take to be a modern classic in graphic design education, Making and Breaking the Grid (Rockport, 2002), Timothy Samara makes the obvious preliminary point. “Pictures and symbols, fields of text, headlines, tabular data: all these pieces must come together to communicate.”

In my last post, I argued that visual display is an integral part of the communication. The messages a Web page delivers are not all in the words, or the content of the images. It’s a mistake to separate ‘content’ from ‘visual display’, and to insist that handling the first must precede development of the second—just as it would be a mistake to insist that the words of a song must all be written before it’s set to music. (We would never have had Paul McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’ if he hadn’t woken up with the entire tune in his head. Then he wrote the words.)

I promised you a few more examples of what I mean.

Layouts themselves communicate a message. Just as a sonnet in praise of anarchy would be incoherent—or deliberately ironic—so would a Web page for (say) an anarchic rock group which had a clear hierarchy and in which every element occupied an orderly place. To work properly, the page needs clashing colours, headlines at the bottom, tilted images with ragged edges, etc., etc. The display is the content.

Colours have obvious meanings. Porn sites convey a sense of excitement and danger by exploiting red and black. Sites for law firms need to be in more subdued colours, with some blue to suggest calm and stability. Sober colours say, “We are solid and reliable”, just as bright colours say, “We can cheer you up.”

Animations, depending on their form and position and colours, say things like, “We are fizzing with ideas” or “We are sophisticated and up-to-date” or “This site will energise you.”

Enough. You can probably make up many more examples yourself.

As should be clear from my last few posts, I am a big fan of what has come to called “the semantic Web.” Part of this movement is about making it easier for machines (computers, or computer software) to read and process Web pages. The other part is about making it easier for people to read and process Web pages.

Who could argue with either aim?

In my post of the 18th November, however, I mentioned that I had “a few caveats.” Let me explain with reference to some recommendations made by Andy Clarke.

Andy is the author of a really stimulating, detailed and up-to-date book on CSS-based Web design: Transcending CSS, published by New Riders earlier this year. He has a Web site about himself and his studio. There is also a site about the book.

Andy argues for a design work flow that proceeds like this:

1. Gather the content.
2. Mark it up meaningfully, i.e., in the order that makes most sense, and with HTML tags inspired by the content itself, and not by thoughts of visual presentation.
3. Use a style sheet to display the final visual page.

My major quarrel with this is that it makes too sharp a distinction between “content” and “visual display.” I would argue that all the visual details of a Web page convey a message—separately, and in various combinations. One trivial obvious example: it may be good for a property site to look cluttered, and difficult to take in at a glance. The clutter conveys the message, “There’s such a lot of stuff here you may well find the property you’re looking for.” In other words, it is itself (part of) the content.

I’ll give a lot more examples in the second part of this post. But first I’d like to mention my minor quarrel with Andy’s proposed work flow. Given that content includes display, there’s no reason why display shouldn’t come first in time, and the page elements created second, to fit the display. Otherwise, it’s a bit like ruling that the words of a song have to come before the music. I admit that many of the world’s greatest songs have been created this way. But a huge number—of masterpieces, too—have been created the other way round. A compose writes a tune, and then a lyricist supplies words to fit the tune.

I would hate this possibility to be ruled out for Web sites.