Creative Web Design Factors: Effective Web Content, Publishing & Aesthetics
Do all those horrible little animated or dancing gif creatures, strange sounds, and movements really belong on (to) your web site? Why? Are they a detriment?
Is that a web site or a musical?
Before you let your web designer loose, better look at these not so FAQ questions.
They aren't asked nearly enough, and look at what's happened to internet web design:
- Who is Carvaggio?
- Which book did Hemingway win a Nobel Prize for?
- Do you prefer the Marx Brothers, or the Three Stooges?
- What is iambic pentameter, and why did Shakespere use it?
- Who came first, Rodgers and Hammerstein or Rodgers and Hart?
- Name the characters on "Friends," or better yet, the Seven Dwarfs?
Get to the realities of the various types of web content:
EFFECTIVE WEB CONTENT
A needs based web development process that takes into account the needs of your "information customer" takes the high road to web design. Unfortunately, this process is often dismissed or ignored in favor of a "cheap quickie" web site that gets thrown together, thrown up on the web, and quickly forgotten. Web design on the cheap has led to ineffective content, irrelevant graphics, and ultimately, many unsucessful web site publication experiences.
Serving up web pages where the web content is detrimental to your information customer's experience is a waste of everybody's time. The key still lies in determining what is of value to your information customer. Combine this with the convenience of the web, and you have a winner.
The problematic why of web content:
Because it's free: So are fleas, and pollution. How about a flea circus? Tons of "cut-n-paste" web page pollution, all available for the taking on the web. Willy-nilly web design at its worst. Many trash-picker web designers actually charge for this stuff. Sorry.
Because it's easy: A web productivity tool -- the software programs for web page creation -- in and of itself will not provide useful and valuable web content. Garbage in -- garbage out: nothing of any real value gets keyboarded in, and this same software easily builds and dumps more of these web page documents into the web.
Because I like it: On the other hand, much like NASA, almost any design idea can be accomplished given unlimited amounts of time, money, and effort. A unique, "cool," and even admirable design (or overdesign) often sacrifices utility.
Within a succesful web design process, it's necessary to weigh both content aesthetics and effectiveness. Excluding taste, one thing is for certain at this particular point in time: words, and in particular keywords, are the only type of "creative" content that your information customer can conveniently search the WWW for -- and find -- using the search engine services and their text-based indexes. The correct word use leads to search engine results.
That said, where is the money for your web development process going? Does the web design content of your web page document help or hurt the text search of the search engine process, or affect its ranking and placement with the search engine services?
Detrimental web content drives people off a web site by making it slow loading, noisy, and/or confusing. Things to consider in choosing effective web content include the utility and practicality of file "size" on data transfer "speeds", and the quality and necessity of computer generated images and sounds...
Pictures the size of your closet door do not fit well on the web, and the actual image quality is going to be low. Still, the right graphics and images make a site interesting, and help convey a certain look or image, which is something that's hard to get a handle on. A prime consideration in web design is that large graphic image file sizes are slow to load with phone line Internet access. Search engines can NOT locate and identify this content (yet).
Writing, word use, and organization must all work together to give your information customer a positive web experience. Rewriting is essential, as low quality content will drive away your web site's reason for being: the information customer. Other critical elements include actually providing the information that the person is searching for, giving some value for their time and a reason to read, return to, or recommend you web site to the world.
People search the web for jokes. What is appropriate for you audience? (You want an audience, don't you? See above.)
The linking aspects of HTML lends the web a certain writing style that may not have been appropriate in the Bard's time. Using the right keywords also serve the needs of the search engines. Computer screen resolution is low quality, so write big (no tiny type), and it's not like you're paying for printing and paper.
Audio-visual design is an art that's poorly bastardized on the WWW. Who needs the noise? Why? Who is paying the royalties for all that high quality music? Again, search engines can NOT locate and identify this content (yet).
Speaking of television, is that opera-loving web designer out to make your web site into some strange music video? Is this "entertainment," or an imposition on your information customer? Again with the large, slow loading files. My question is, why try to compete with TV or Hollywood and all their actual know how and resources in audio-visual production? Besides, the web can give people something that the television industry is loathe to provide: valuable information.
WEB DESIGN EXAMPLES:
What's a web design discussion without examples? Each example provides specific benefits and drawbacks (like anything else). For the first three examples, click on the link, and a window will pop up with that visual demonstration. Close that window when you're done viewing it. Gary's Garage takes you out to my other site, where the emphasis is on creative writing and visual tricks.
CRATER LAKE :
a visual presentation promoting Crater Lake National Park as a vacation destination, much like a self-propelled, automatic (every 30 seconds) slide show without the projector, slides, or screen. The file size of some images impedes performance, and user control is very limited.
DAT WRITERS :
a simple frame set with: (1) a stationary left column that holds web content elements static for continuous viewing: images, links, and/or JavaScript navigation, and controls for the movement of information in the (2) scrollable right side column, where the specific information is actually organized and presented. The use of "frames" generally defeats any search engine benefits, and JavaScript creates strange problems when it comes to printing hard copy web pages.
HEMINGWAY CSS :
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allow for a precise web page design, with more control over images and text than HTML is capable of providing. Cascading Style Sheets are not uniformly supported by the various web browsers; the pages will look different, and will not work at all in 3.x and older version browsers.
GARY'S GARAGE :
In gross total violation of the above advice, a broadband-style web development project using JavaScript for image preloading and navigation. Large page files with numerous image rollovers warehousing my creative writing efforts: jokes, stories, mad rantings and recipes -- wordplay -- check it out! In a high speed internet connection environment, such a heavily visual design (big image files, ~500K page files of images loading) loads quickly, making it more viable. And remember, our internet access keeps getting faster, folks. Cable? Broadband? That big ol' Fat Pipe? The AOL / Time Warner merger?
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Last Updated 6/22/00
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