Paul Raven made a comment today on his blog comparing the artwork on a couple of different magazine covers. Warren Ellis has recently been on about cover design as well. So I thought today, I’d look at the latest batch of covers for every magazine I could remember, and write some generalized thoughts on the design. I’m a self-taught designer, so take my comments and criticisms with a grain of salt.
I am often asked to comment on the web designs of friends and associates. It’s a tricky situation for me. Regardless of the visual design, which is usually fine, often, I find problems underneath the hood that are difficult to explain. What I find are sites designed with tables-based layouts, using older HTML techniques. Today, I’d like to make the case for why you should discard that old way of design and move to standards-compliant design.
1. Accessibility
A web design done with standards in mind is broadly accessible. I have noticed that the SF/F fandom is particularly accepting of those with handicaps and disabilities, but many SF-related websites do not take these fans into consideration. A properly designed web site takes makes allowances for the use of screen readers and other accessibility tools. Tables based designs make a mess of this. Accessibility is a small part of standards-based designs, based on the number of people that it effects. But do you really want to run the risk of alienating any potential fans?
With css/xhtml-based designs, the content is separated (mostly) from the presentation. Here’s what this means: say you have a new book coming out that you want to promote. If your site is built with old techniques, updating your design involves a complete teardown and rebuild. However, if your site has been built with standards, you could simply replace the stylesheet and have an entirely new design that reflects your primary project. In general, these websites are very easy to make changes for, as far as presentation is concerned. Don’t like that link color? Edit the CSS, and it’ll change across the site.
3. SEO Implications
A standards-based design takes search engine optimization into account straight away. Proper page structure, even if it is not perceived by humans using browsers, will be picked up by indexing services. Building your site with standards in mind does not automatically mean higher rankings, but it certainly helps.
4. Less Bandwidth Intense
Standards-based designs are lean and quick. CSS is downloaded once, whereas in the old way, the presentation would be downloaded over and over again. Your file sizes are all-around smaller, which means a faster website, and happier visitors.
5. Your website is like the cover of a book.
A standards-based design can look good or it can look bad. But more often than not, they look pretty good. Your website is like a book cover. Whether you know it or not, potential readers are evaluating whether or not to pick up your work based on your website. They may not even know it–it may just be subconcious. But good design facilitates the presentation of information, and you are in the business of selling that. Your website should reflect a level of professionalism at least on par to the cover design of your books. Don’t commit a sin on the level of the SFWA website, please.
Afterword
Despite all this, I am not a standardsista. Sometimes to satisfy the desires of your client, you need to bend the standards a little, and I still sleep okay when I have to do so. Like anything, you can go overboard with the idea of standards-based design. But in general, the above are some very good reasons for hiring a professional designer who is familiar with standards to provide your site–or if you are a do-it-yourself-er, picking up some books on XHTML and CSS. This is the part where I plug me. You already know I do web design, but if you’re interested in learning more about my client process, visit my freelance information page.
Continuing on the thoughts of yesterday’s post, I’ve recently read Clay Shirky’s speech, “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.” You can read a transcript of it, or watch a video. I highly recommend checking out one or the other and coming back here. I’ll wait. For the lazy, here’’s a choice bit that explains much of it:
If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would’ve come off the whole enterprise, I’d say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened–rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.
And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.
…
And this is the other thing about the size of the cognitive surplus we’re talking about. It’s so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let’s say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That’s about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 100 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.
Pretty cool, huh? I think Clay is describing the underlying force behind the New York Times article from yesterday. The cognitive surplus is leading to many people using the time formerly soaked up by the one-way media to create things themselves, and to share them. Which causes a glut in the choices for actually consuming, and results in the paradox of choice. Making things collaboratively like Wikipedia makes us happy, but having all those other options makes us unhappy. Another paradox, of sorts.
Wikipedia is a bit of a different from, say, writing fan fiction, because Wikipedia has a core usefulness that is more broad in appeal. You could say that Wikipedia provides a clear benefit to society, whereas the benefit to society of more fiction, or more music, or more photography is less readily apparent. I’m not saying that your X-Files/Evil Dead crossover fanfic doesn’t provide a benefit. I just think it’s harder to make the case for it. I’m not going to do it for you, anyway.
The real mind blower here for me is this idea of thinking about the cognitive surplus–not thinking about it as leisure time, but thinking about it as hours spent thinking. That surplus has always existed, but something about the Internet has provided an entirely new means of tapping into it. Sure, some have chosen to express their surplus by launching flame wars over which Doctor was the best (clearly the 7th), but I think Shirky is right in pointing out that this is all embryonic still. We’re going to see some amazing things soon. What forms will they take? My thinking along these lines before was limited to the idea of crowdsourcing, but I’m starting to see that it’s so much more than that. I really need to read Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody.
What problems can we solve using the internet and our cognitive surplus?
Charlie Finlay said in the comments on the last post that, for the past several years, every SF novel he’s read has seemed this way, which is why he’s trended towards fantasy. So I put some thought into what SF novels I had read recently.
The Execution Channel was the most recent one. Holy smokes, was this depressing. So it fits the bill. Postsingular seemed a lot more upbeat. In fact, it was the first near-future SF anything that I’ve read in a while that didn’t mention terrorism. So I haven’t really noticed a trend of depressive elements in my most recent reading of novels, but then, I don’t read a lot of SF novels.
I do know that Gordon has been talking about getting a lot more stories about death for a while now. Maybe I’m just now starting to see those stories being published here and there.
It’s odd, because I’ve spent the past couple of years kind of obsessed with death and the afterlife, and now that I’m coming out of that obsession and starting to feel better, I find death all over the place in my reading. Was it that common of a theme before? Not sure. I don’t remember it being so, but it’s probably a matter of my changed perspective as much as anything else.
Some questions.
1. Does anyone know how relatively optimistic the SF published in China is?
2. I don’t read Baen’s–are they more upbeat?
3. Do you think British writers have been more prone to depressive stuff since their own terrorist attacks recently?
4. Is there a need for upbeat SF? Not necessarily more positive, but maybe less, well, grim?
Hi! My name is Jeremiah Tolbert, but you can call me Jeremy. I am a fantasy and science fiction writer, photographer, and web designer living in Northern Colorado. By day, I work as a designer for a background screening firm. I am currently available for freelance design work. Drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. I love hearing from new people.
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Continuing on the thoughts of yesterday’s post, I’ve recently read Clay Shirky’s speech, “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.” You can read a transcript of it, or watch a video. I highly recommend checking out one or the other and coming back here. I’ll wait. For the lazy, here’’s a choice bit [...]
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Pretty cool, huh? I think Clay is describing the underlying force behind 
