the face of the web is changing.

[jocelyncee]

Maybe not as blythely and clicheed as all that, perhaps, but I am at least becoming aware of the web's roots in print format. With a husband working at a newspaper that has had a web presence for several years, if not a decade or more, I have been witness (and sometimes impetus) to the changes taking place now in their format. What I have noticed is a typical human frailty: the dependence on the existing, the traditional, the known. Online news still wears the vestments of its older, more established hardcopy cousin. This is a trait that is changing, but online journalism is experience the difficult adolescence, in which it is no longer congratulated simply for being online.

In my work with Nightgig I've also noticed that web comics are also somewhat bound to their more traditional print forbears, with many (if not most) webcomickers designing in strip or full-page format, whether or not their comics were drawn or sketched first by hand or no. The function is dictated to some extent by form, which is largely dictated by either the standard column format or the proportions of a piece of Bristol Board.

Even in my own area of web design it is excruciatingly difficult at times to get past the idea that good paper layouts will work on the web. Advances have of course been made; menus are no longer exclusively bulleted or numbered lists, and navigation doesn't have to be right below the header or in a sidebar. Links to supporting sites don't have to be directly to the right of the header, or right under it. (In fact, the most recent Good Design (TM) that I have seen lately is on the affiliate sites under Koalla Wallop, a webcomics host and community. Their link logo can be found in an unobtrusive (top left-hand) corner of each site, no words, just the face of a koala in a splatter of color, which denotes support from the site but neither overpowers nor intrudes upon each site's design.

What has struck me as the most odd is that so many web sites (mine included) follow what appear to be newspaper guidelines: the most important items are to be found above the fold, above the bottom of the browser window. We are, in essence, imagining a sheet of paper and saying: what is the most important stuff on my site? This stuff should be up at the top. Our web site is this imaginary publication that our readers will hopefully be reading.

But what is the actual medium that our viewers will be seeing? A computer monitor (or perhaps WebTV) that uses landscape orientation, not portrait. Why then do we (myself included) insist upon designing content to be displayed as though each browser window would be turned on its side? Sure, the content at the top of a page can be the most visible, but that assumes also that this content is not dwarfed by something else on the page. Surely information presented in the center of a page (much like the main story in a newspaper) also attracts the necessary attention, if formatted correctly and with enough noticeable features (a catchy headline in large typeface perhaps, or a prominent photograph) that it will overshadow what's at the top?

Only minutes ago Tim and I finished interviewing David Simon of Crimson Dark, who told us that making a web comic per se wasn't specifically his objective: telling his story was first and foremost, and upon examining the media available to him, he decided that web comics were the way to go. Form followed function in this case.

I do not have any kind of solution for this minor conundrum, blanket or otherwise. For the next few projects I am going to try and figure out if there is some way to design for function in the space we have, namely the only visible portion of the browser window. Maybe even the news industry could get wind of this, and begin to approach online news with a similar attitude to David, forgetting for a moment that they've been used to paper, and treat the web as a blank canvas, on which their masterpiece can be built.

As to my own endeavors, more will be revealed, and I will unveil anything I discover here, as well as in my Nightgig blog.

Thanks for the listen.

Comments

[hpkomic.livejournal.com]

You make several good points here. I think we're beginning to see people step away from the thought process of the print world, and use the internet to their advantage, but it seems to me the whole movement is slow at best. There are still many people who will flat out ignore a comic or site if it strays too far from the traditional print stylings.

[jocelyncee.livejournal.com]

A much more concise summary than I could have written. *grin* This thought occurred to me last night, and I plan to put it to work as best I can. More reports on relative success/failure are forthcoming.

We humans are notoriously stubborn. "It worked for our fathers, it works for us" thinking actually shaped the news broadcast (narration of events was necessary with radio, and translated into narration on television). What is known is also comforting, and comfortable. It's difficult to break out of form and risk ridicule (or being ignored).

It's not necessarily prudent to make a total break because of this; whether we like it or not, our audiences are largely human like us. Working in a blend of the traditional and the innovative can make for a more accessible product.

[the-least.livejournal.com]

I think part of the issue is that some people want to produce material which can be easily translated across mediums. Thus many of the more successful webcomics are designed to also be suitable for print, and often this has been the key to their success. Even I, from the very beginning, made sure that all of my pages were 300 dpi, even though this is quite unnecessary for a webcomic.

In terms of website design, I think the reason that so many sites lean towards a newspaper format is because it actually works really well. Newsprint is over a century old and has had plenty of time to establish effective templates, and the web isn't all that different. Sure, we're all using a landscape format, but there are very few webpages which actually fit into a single screen without any scrolling required. Computer users are much more used to vertical scrolling than horizontal, so unless a website only has 800x600 pixels worth of information to convey, it seems unavoidable that it's going to end up tall and thin.

Oh, and hello! Thanks for the plug, and for the interview, I had a great time.

[jocelyncee.livejournal.com]

Making a webcomic that can be printed if the opportunity presents itself (or making it happen) is nothing but a smart idea. I don't think that all design traditions should be abandoned, but a tabula rasa approach might produce some potentially more functional results.

I'm thinking mainly of the designs I've been responsible for, with a header on top, followed by a navigation menu, then the full page comic. I realize that scrolling needs to happen sometimes (my 12" laptop gets 1026x768 at best) but having to scroll down to read a tall first panel of a full-pager is awkward. The presentation (the website) should be tailored to the product (in this case, a graphic novel) to give the product the best advantage.

I am in no way advocating vertical scrolling. That wouldn't be any better. Of course there are restrictions that all media must conform to, or choose to (in the case of cross-media creations). I believe, however, that a re-examination of the problem with this specific medium in mind could result in easier access to the product.

--

Oh, and I should be thanking you as well, you know. We're glad to have such talented/hardworking artists on the show. You really have a professional-quality style, in both writing and art.

And I had a good time too.