Words have such inherent power; yet they have even more power on the web. Beyond their normal capacities for communication, words on the web gain the attribute of accessibility. In addition to the accessibility of the words themselves, their sheer existence creates the possibility of discovery. Because words can be "read" or, to be more technically correct, because they can be downloaded, indexed, and processed by search engines, the very fact that they exist helps me find them. So why then, I ask, do so many websites conceal their valuable words by disguising them as graphics rather than presenting them as "readable," discoverable text?

The obvious answer is that designers want to pick typefaces or typographic effects that cannot be produced on the web without using graphics. I have sympathy for this inclination; I even use graphics as text myself from time to time. But I know that when I do choose to use a graphic instead of text, it has the cost of obscuring the words themselves; it empties them of their extra power. When a search engine looks at an image, it sees a block of pixels that could represent an image of a frog just as easily as it represents my nicely designed typographic page title. But alas, sometimes, as Fernando Lamas would say, "It's better to look good than to feel good." Sometimes we can't resist going for the look, even though it makes our words less functional on the web.

But for the love of words, why would anyone put all of their text in a graphic? I've seen this way too many times (especially on agency and design firm websites...hint hint). Using graphics for page titles is costly enough...especially since search engines consider page titles among the most important words on a page. Nevertheless, I can understand the urge to make those page titles look really good. But using a graphic to display body copy? Why completely obscure and hide away all of those valuable, powerful words?

I think it's an act of disrespect to words. They're sitting right there on the screen; they want to tell the world their story...but instead they're locked up, muted, and silenced from declaring their message. Poor words. Let them go! Do it...just kill that inclination to give your paragraph a drop shadow or to control the rag of the line breaks.

I love typography. In a former letter-press life I used to painstakingly replace metal "em" quads with "en" quads so I could hang punctuation into the margins of the page. I hate to admit it, but outside of typographers and fine press printers, nobody ever noticed. Today on the web, people are used to paragraphs that don't quite flow the way we might like them to. Some people even increase their font sizes on purpose so they can read a webpage more easily...a typographer's nightmare! But with due respect to Hal Curtis, whom I greatly admire, the days of art directors tormenting studio artists with endless tweaks to type are over. No more scanning, laser printing, enlarging on the Cannon copier (not the Minolta) then reducing them back down using the stat camera instead of the copier, for that slightly grainy feel; those days are over, at least on the web anyway.   next >