Comments on: We don’t do ‘web design’

By: Ade

Ade — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 11:28:24 +0000

Thanks for your response Oliver. Quite honestly I applaud you for waking people up to the richness of the discipline of typography and its relevance to the web. And I totally get that you ’softened’ your original title from “…typography. Period.” to “95%… typography” - I initially found your original post inspiring and revelatory. Initially
But I’m also trying to wake people up. What came across was the view of ‘web design’ as an abstract task, a view that seems common amongst a certain significant slice of the web design community. We see sites offering “a showcase of the best of web design” which comprise a bunch of undeniably attractive and easy-to-read blogs. There’s often lots to learn from these examples - especially in bringing consistent technical (CSS) approaches to common layout issues. But the point is that this is just one aspect of what most commercial designers have to do, and “good web design” cannot exist in an abstract form. Generally designers are working as part of wider teams who are re/creating websites that have to achieve goals through design, content, function, tone etc etc etc. As an example, a recent brief led to the design team starting with a single word: “luxury”. Along with all the many many other things involved in delivering the brief, the first was to communicate - through the design - an intangible quality. Of course typographic knowledge was used along the way. But typography could not answer the brief.

Finally, you comment: ‘I think this is where you shoot yourself in the foot. â€œQuite rare these days.â€ That is exactly why I say 95%. Because itâ€™s rare. I didnâ€™t measure anything scientifically. I wanted to wake people up.’

You said “Web Design is 95% Typography”. I said that “…pure typography…” web sites are “quite rare”. That suggests your 95% is more like 5%. As Roi suggested, you have a point. But it’s not the point.

By: DG

DG — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:00:03 +0000

I used to be a designer, but have moved much more to the developer side of things, and as such I’m going to sit somewhat on the fence, though maybe swaying slightly to one side.

The problem is that the discussion is trying to separate content from design, whereas in reality the two live hand in hand. Websites are truly one of the few entities that we do judge by their covers, and rightly so - I refuse to believe anyone would buy from an ecommerce site when it looks like a bad day in Baghdad, at least, anyone with any sense. But can you really argue that you appreciate a site because it is easy to read, or that the design of the site does not incorporate its content?

If it were just the case “Webdesign is all about contents and these contents need to be read”, then what would be the point of background images and graphics in general. The point is that lines, colour, and complex imagery draws your eye and mind to certain areas of content that may be more important than others. For instance, the now depreciated / defunked (and rightly so) blink tag, served the purpose to draw your eye in. In fact, there is no way to avoid reading or focussing on that text even if your eye strays away from that area of the page briefly. But is that a content or a design factor? The answer must surely be the latter given that if we replaced that with a block of colour that strobbed or faded, our eye would again be drawn in. So it’s the effect, and not the content that calls to us, and the same effect can be achieved using interesting imagery.

So, once we have our audience’s attention, the way to keep it is to actually have something interesting to say. Regardless of how I displayed my content, if it was pointless, convoluted (much like my response here) or incomprehensible, then we would immediately lose our readers / users (see lpb’s entry on 4 seconds).

I’m not quite sure where this leaves the debate, but I suppose it shows me swaying a lot more in the direction of design than content… I’m sure this will rage on for some time to come.

By: Roi

Roi — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 11:30:49 +0000

Well, I’m not a Designer either, simply a humble PR person and Copy Writer, but I agree completely with you on this; clearly you know considerably more than ‘nothing’ of the issues involved here… This chap does indeed have the wrong end of the stick really to suggest that the Typography of a ‘digital communication’ is THE key focal point.

His attitude reminds me a bit of my old English Language teacher from school, who would tell me off for drawing little doodles in the margins or between the paragraphs of my stories for her: ‘Its not Art!’ she’d apoplectically point out, ‘Thats got nothing to do with your work!!’
She had a point. But then again, she missed mine.

By: Oliver Reichenstein

Oliver Reichenstein — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 00:51:22 +0000

Very nice approach. I read it with great interest, as I thought finally there is someone building a pragmatic case against the 95%. At first.

But then my eyes got so tired with this small font that I felt like your voice is getting thinner and thinner. Is it because of the whispering fontsize or is it the argumentation that get more silent towards the end? : ) Okay, I’ll try to read it again then…

Read it again. Same pain with this microfont. You should join 100E2. At least you use a reasonable leading… Anyway:

“Maybe the intention is to say simply â€œdonâ€™t see the design, the content is the thing youâ€™re here forâ€. Fine, then maybe itâ€™s pure typography. But thatâ€™s quite rare these days; even the design of your blog can say (almost) as much about you as the words you write.”

I think this is where you shoot yourself in the foot. “Quite rare these days.” That is exactly why I say 95%. Because it’s rare. I didn’t measure anything scientifically. I wanted to wake people up.

Webdesign is all about contents and these contents need to be read. From looking at my design I hope it becomes obvious that I am aware that the surface as such says a lot about the contents. My point though is to develop the surface starting from within, instead of creating a shell and then fill it with “content”. Form follows you know…

I still firmly believe that webdesign can be almost fully explained using the lost treasures of the 20th century typographers. Of course I am aware that there must be other ways. I haven’t found one that is so compelling, pragmatic, obvious though. Read Ruder or Brockmann. It’s amazing.