In print, visual impact, beauty, or making sure that type just plain fits is immensely important. In print, a word is a word, whether it's in the body copy or dropped out of a four color image. But the marketing paradigm for using images in print is not the same on the web. In print, visual impact grabs attention. You have to have attention before you can say anything. In this regard, in print, the importance of visuals can trump words. But on the web, the attention-grabbing work of the image is not necessary at all. This is because people don't walk past websites or have websites presented to them in between television shows. Instead, people go to websites by choice. They go to a website on purpose by clicking on a link or by typing in a URL. Site design has no influence whatsoever in whether someone chooses to click on a link. Once they do click, the way the site looks again becomes important... but not supremely important.


At this point in time (hopefully this will change soon), search engines view Flash movies in the same way they view images... they don't. Any words that you display in a Flash movie are not read on the web. The extra power of words that we've highlighted in this newsletter is also obscured in Flash. We're looking forward to changes in Flash and in search engine technology, so that this will no longer be the case. Flash use has one big upside in that it mitigates many of the browser display problems plaguing the web. For now though, we believe that the benefit of simplifying browser display issues does not outweigh the importance of words on the web. Therefore, we try to use both graphic typography and Flash animations as auxiliary elements to a website, not as a primary website environment.


Words need to be free on the web. They do powerful things when they're free; they actually have inherent value as words. They get downloaded, indexed, and displayed in search engines. This helps your message and your information reach your audience. That's a good thing. You want that to happen, and it will, unless of course you don't have anything to say. But if that's the case, why build a website?