Design DESIGN TAKES TO THE WEB

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Oct, 2000 by Tom Ernst

So, what do we know so far? Auto dealers, record labels, traditional stockbrokers, dating services, auctioneers, travel agents, telecommunications companies, UPS, FedEx, and the U.S. Postal Service should be worried right now, but they already know that. In the world of print publishing, directories, databases, annual sourcebooks, encyclopedias and anyone heavily dependent on classified advertising are vulnerable. For a magazine designer like myself this is good news. Most magazines will likely be moving their most tedious and visually challenged content to related Web sites if they haven't already done so, leaving plenty of extra space for the entertaining, glamorous, sexy, compelling stuff at which contemporary magazines continue to excel. If anything, the Internet has been a windfall for the traditional ink-on-paper magazine business, spawning scores of related titles on both the b-to-b and consumer side.

For the time being, life is good for magazine editors and art directors. The Web-only magazines have only served to remind people how much they prefer words and pictures in print. Internet technology will need to attain a whole new level of quality, convenience, user-friendliness, and dependability before it can seriously challenge magazines at what they do best.

Robert Ayers Publication Design Inc.

Internet "splash" pages and Web sites are influencing print pages both typographically and visually. Internet pages, like print pages, have a limited design space. The main goal of an Internet page is to create action or response as quickly as possible. Print pages that emulate this action or response goal will be more concerned about quantity and quality of their text. Editors are shortening headlines, subheads and body text to create a quicker read. Callouts, breakheads and captions add new and additional information and act as eye-catching entry points. Type fonts, sizing and styling are important to get the reader to spend quality time reading. Many Web sites use simple backgrounds with concise wording and graphics; print editors and designers would be wise to reevaluate this simplicity of design.

Internet graphics should quickly and clearly represent the mood, style and message and direct the viewer to the action. Using small graphics on the print page is much like creating a hot button in a Web page--to draw the reader to important text. That's the action or response portion of the print page. Larger graphics on print pages now reflect some of the treatments you see on Web sites--i.e., soft edges, blended images, tight croppings and special effects. Black and white and color rules are being used in both Internet and print design to create movement of the eye to visuals or text. Rules often work well with short text, like tying captions to photos, overlines with headlines or callouts to body copy.

Most important is that Internet and print editors and designers must determine the appropriate treatments for their sites and publications, reflecting the feeling, mood, demographics and content of the printed material.