Creative Web Design: Tips and Tricks Step by Step

Citation

Hadler, D. (1998), "Creative Web Design: Tips and Tricks Step by Step", Internet Research, Vol. 8 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr.1998.17208eaf.011

Creative Web Design: Tips and Tricks Step by Step

Creative Web Design: Tips and Tricks Step by Step

M. Baumgardt1998Springer-VerlagAus$64.25, 3-540-62662-X, Available: Springer-Verlag New York Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA andSpringer-Verlag Heidelberg Tiergartenstr. 17 D-69121 Heidelberg Germany

Keywords Design, Internet

There has never been a time when creative art and design has not been inexorably linked with technology. While we may remember the great classical artists for their works, it was the technical skills of paint mixing, architecture, sculpting and theatre crafts that brought their creations to life. The twentieth century brought us the high technology arts of film, television and computers, which artists eventually adopted as the vehicle for their work. Inevitably it was technologists whose knowledge and hardware gave them the first opportunities to explore, that pioneered these media. It was equally inevitable that the initial forays into the media were technically oriented, the practitioners apparently unaware of the artistic scope of their machines. So it was with the Internet which, until comparatively recently, has been perceived as the preserve of the pocket protector brigade. It is only since the rapid domestication and commercialisation of the Web that art and design have assumed an equal role in the online environment, the technology becoming a partner to creativity just as it has in film, TV and music.

Print-based publishers have always acknowledged the power of good graphic art and design, but as anyone who tries the "save as HTML"' option on their desktop publishing application quickly realises, the Web is a different ballpark with its own visual language, and a plethora of variables that question most of the tenets of good print practice. Michael Baumgart's Creative Web Design: Tips and Tricks Step by Step approaches the technology of the Web from a designer's point of view, in an attempt to demystify and make it accessible to practising designers. Among the sea of Web design books on the market, this surfaces as one of the more successful.

Creative Web Design takes the reader through a logical progression, starting with fundamental Web concepts and working through layout and formatting issues, including tables, frames, and the use of images. The final chapters deal with recent developments including cascading style sheets, Javascript, and streaming media. The author uses the language of designers, avoiding, for the most part, the temptation to lapse into "tech talk". Where necessary, separate text boxes are used to delve into more technical matters, keeping the primary dialogue focused and engaging while ensuring that weightier topics are covered. These technical asides cover a diverse range including pre-loading images and Web safe palettes as well as explanations of techniques specific to certain applications. The book is crammed with images that are not only used as examples, but also reinforce its design orientation. One of the strengths of this book is its appearance, a design triumph in itself. It sat on my desk for several days and every clientwho passed through felt compelled to pick it up and thumb through, a positive sign for a book that has contemporary design as a primary theme.

The real strength of Creative Web Design is the inclusion of interviews with some of the Web's most interesting designers, which are interspersed between the main chapters and offer an illuminating insight into how designers approach site creation. A recurring theme is the concept of site architecture, which pulls together structure, navigation and appearance as a construct that is unique to Web sites and multimedia applications. The interviews stress this concept while discussing client liaison, technical assembly and thematic issues, advancing the hypothesis that architecture represents a paradigm for a holistic approach to Web site design. It is this dialogue that raises the book above its contemporaries and offers the designer real insights into working with the Web as a unique medium.

While Creative Web Design is impressive, it exhibits some limitations. Pedagogically, there are problems with step-by-step instructions and Baumgardt uses them extensively. Techniques such as animated GIF creation are explained in this way, which ties the method to specific applications and the author risks alienating readers who have chosen different imaging products. In fact the author focuses his attention on a few products such as Pagemill, NetObjects Fusion, Photoshop and Bbedit and, while these are common applications, they do not represent the full range of tools available to the designer. The accent on the Macintosh platform may not be a fair reflection of the current Web design community; however, the target audience of print-based designers would probably find it quite comforting.

The author stresses that Creative Web Design is not a technical manual; however, the text dips into issues of basic HTML and Javascript in a manner that may be confusing to readers with a non-technical background. It is difficult to estimate how much pre-requisite knowledge the author expects of the reader and many would need to use this text in concert with more technically-oriented publications. Fortunately the author acknowledges this.

A disappointing aspect of this book is the accompanying CD-ROM that contains examples of the sites referred to in the text. The content is somewhat sparse and far greater use could have been made of this resource. In the big picture this does not detract from the quality of the publication.

Creative Web Design: Tips and Tricks Step by Step is aimed at a specific market, namely print-based designers making the transition to the Web environment, but it makes good reading for anyone in the Web design field. If a designer or institution is coming from a print base and moving into the Web, this is a "must read", especially if there is strong technical support available. The combination of its design approach, extensive interviews and its architectural design philosophy make this one of the most interesting Web design texts on the market.

Deri HadlerEducational Designer (technology)Charles Sturt UniversityAustralia