kz prompt 1
How does cyberspace fit into or disrupt the writers’ notions of design and its space?
“Designing for the web is designing for a moving target” says Patricia Sullivan (117). Having characteristics of print, television, and film, web design departs from traditions of graphic design, but, she says, ignoring the visual would be to not understand a major component of what constitutes writing on the web. Lupton points out that white space as a visual component, which most modern designers feel is crucial to good design, is not always the best for some web pages–when comparing product information, for example, it’s better to have it all on the same page. Many web designers use Flash rather than traditional web-designing software for its flexibility. Text, images, sound, animation and video can all be easily integrated into a page. While some criticize all animation as annoying, Madeleine Sorapure points out that a word that fades or bursts or spins off the stage had those associations added to it, reinforcing the message, creating more opportunities for impact than traditional design (418). Lupton notes that digital readers are more impatient than print readers, and that this arises from different expectations. On the web people expect to be productive, to be in search mode. They also expect that they will be distracted, disappointed and delayed by following false leads (74). Kinross shows us that nothing remains free of rhetoric. Visual rhetoric, such as the creation of Bauhaus-influenced typefaces that were believed to be modern and “scientific,” is tied to a particular era and history and is never untouched by ideology. Kinross warns that the revolution of information technology carries an implicit message that ideology is reduced along with the size of our portable electronic devices, but that this is far from the case, and we should remain vigilant and resistant (143).
