Money Money Money - Web Design Graphics

Contributed by Ian Hess

The Benefit of Using Web Design Graphics: "Cha-ching!"

Most of us think of Web design graphics as just pretty little pictures. Many designers deny themselves the benefit of well targeted graphics because they require more technology and special skills to construct than text, or even hypertext. But when well targeted and purposeful, graphics can make happen what text often cannot.

Think about the number of people who read about the benefits of a product online, but still aren't sure, or would feel safer buying offline after they become well informed.

Graphics hold the extreme benefit of being able to produce states of emotion that text alone cannot even come close to achieving so immediately. As well, much of the populace is far more visually literate than literate. The appeal of visual advertising has been introducing want in the public eye for far many more hours than the mandatory education system, and continues to train the eyes and brains of everyone for their entire lifespan beyond a formal education.

Not to mention, television with advertising has penetrated the public education system in many urban areas.

Not to mention, not to mention, not to mention. Wait! Like, what does not to mention even mean, right? Well, it means I'm slippin' the low down to you as if it weren't supposed to be told of, or that it's an offhanded extra comment emphasized by diminishment - meaning, it is more important than anything else previously said, perhaps so important, everyone should already know it by now, even if extremely few do. So, in all cases, this next point gets three "not to mentions:" The Internet is really just one very large series of advertisements for one thing or another....

WAIT! What? The whole net? "No way," you say? Isn't that going a bit too far?

Web Design Graphic Fusion

The Net is an electronic medium dealing in flashes of light. It is not a nice cozy book one sits down with to read. It is also not a newspaper that one unfolds and reads below the headlines. The unfolding part is not as easy as a newspaper. Newspapers are manual. On a Web site, the unfolding is more intensely based upon title evaluation.

When we evaluate a headline or scan content to determine applicability, it is not as handy and easy as having two big leaves of print suspended in the space before our face. The information is more densely packed into a screen "the size of a hubcap." Stealing a concept from the musical group, "System of a Down.") As well, there are so many things competing for our attention on the Net, any Web designer quickly comes to understand that any successful site needs to be treated as advertisement.

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