How we view words
on the web
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Three years ago in America a group of photographers and graphic designers was attending a sneak preview of an internet reading survey carried out by the Stanford-Poynter institute. When the results were announced, they groaned.
The study was an eyetracking one of online news. It found that on the web people don't look at photos and graphics first like they do in newspapers and magazines. Instead they focus on text.
'To say they were sceptical would be an understatement,' said the Poynter researcher of his audience. 'It seemed to go against everything they had always assumed, namely that pictures and splashy graphics were the draw.'
Why this happens is not clear. Normally the slow download time of photos and graphics can play a part, but the study was run on fast connections, displaying illustrations nearly simultaneously with text.
It is more likely to be due to the poor quality of illustrations on today's low-resolution computer screens. Photos in particular have much more impact on high-resolution paper.
'What is revolutionary about the Internet is that the medium is the words,' writes Steve Morris, author of Wired Words: language is the new identity. 'It isn't glossy paper or great design any longer — although a website has to be made to look professional and easy to navigate. A web page is pure information — and that's mainly words.'
Next: Quality not quantity
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