After reading this section, it made me think of the text of a website in a different way. I always thought on websites designers would want to use less writing and more images to replace them because everything about the Internet is so visual. I would think the goal would be to limit as much text as possible. However, the book talks about how the text is the more important part of the site. It provides a more "specific and understandable cue than a picture."
I also realized though that this probably varies depending on what type of website it is. I thought of a clothing website such as JCrew is going to focus more on images because the viewer wants to see what he/she is buying. Here is the link (I could not figure out how to do the PrintScreen function on my Dell): http://www.jcrew.com/AST/Browse/WomenBrowse/Women_Shop_By_Category/dresses.jsp
In this site, you can see that it is dominated with images, with some text explaining the product.
On the other hand, a site like nytimes.com is going to be dominated by text. The text is the main form of communication on the page and the images are used as a backup to support the text. According to Lupton, "The computer display is more hospitable to text than the screens of film or television." Nytimes.com definitely uses this idea because its goal is to bring articles to the reader and display it in a way that is easy and clear to read.
2 weeks ago
5 comments:
This is a good analysis and I like how you use your own opinion to talk about Lupton's idea. I agree some websites may concentrate on a picture just like your example of JCREW since it deals with clothing but i still think text is important as well.
I also always thought website designers thought images and graphics were more valuable than text. I thought it was interesting how its actually the opposite according to Lupton.
I see what you are saying and I think your rationale makes complete sense. One thing that we have to think about when analyzing, though, is the audience of each different website. J. Crew needs to sell a product over the internet; they are selling something you normally have to physically try on in a store. Not to mention, you are spending money. The New York Times is trying to attract a different type of clientele- it's not that they don't care if you can read their website or not, it is just that they focus on so much text because they know their user wants the news. I think that both those websites are prime examples of the ways that different websites need to cater their hierarchy and content for their user.
On the internet the pages that you end up on are always deliberate. So, you know what you're looking for and the design of the webpage is just supposed to help you find what you're already looking for. What's interesting on websites is advertising because we're so trained to search for the link, or information that we want on a webpage, we've become blind to the tons of advertising that liters the sides of the screens. I wonder how successful internet advertising really is.
I think that when weighing the value of text and image you have to keep the concept of balance in mind. Ultimately, they are both of equal importance, but finding the right balance between the two is what will make your website attractive and functional.
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