The key argument in this debate is that of "print versus screen". Many argue that the days of print are numbered and, with the growing popularity of digital media it will become redundant. "We are watching the demise of the traditional media as we know it in this century", stated James Adams, CEO of United Press International, at a recent publishing conference in New York.72 While others argue that the stability and permanence of print will never be taken over by a medium which is considered transient and ephemeral. "Print will be around - just that eventually it will not be as prominent - people like reading from a printed issue", says Mark Shepherd of Brutal Gift and Co, the designers of the Speak website.73

Because of the growing accessibility of the medium and its ethos of sharing, people are willing to comment more on the design of a website than on a more established medium such as print or T.V. On the web, anyone can publish material and this results in non-design orientated people becoming aware of the need for good design. They must make their site stand out from everything else and thus they feel qualified to criticise in an area with which they have had some experience. Also because it is a new media, everyone has an opinion on its advantages and disadvantages, whether it will last and if it will take over from existing media.

There are many criteria to consider when comparing print versus screen; portability and tangibility; legibility and readability; navigation; multimedia and interactivity; stability. However it must be remembered that this is a medium still in its infancy. There is much development yet to happen and it is by no means a fully developed medium.

PORTABILITY & TANGIBILITY

Thus the basic advantage of print over screen emerges; the physical factor. There is no portability; we cannot slouch comfortably on the couch. We cannot walk and read at the same time, we cannot bring our computer comfortably on a bus or to the beach. Rolleri of Speak magazine agrees that "the Internet lacks all of the sensuality and portability of print.²74 While Shepherd recognises that it is possible to be ³much more subtle in printed material - just because of the tactile respondency - you can feel the page - I don¹t touch my monitir to often." Shepherd also points out that he doesn¹t smell his monitor too often either.75 This is considered an important advantage print has over screen. Printed material has different smells depending on ink, paper, weight and age, but computers all have the same (if any) smell. A study conducted by Interquest, Network, Screen and Page: The Future of Reading in a Digital Age, found that "one of the things people really like about books is the way they smell when you open them." They describe the problem as neither technological nor economic, but rather "sociotechnical", in other words, people prefer paper.76

NAVIGATION

The navigation factor is also important. Beatrice Warde identifies the three "great privileges" of print in her introduction to The History of Printing. We are able to turn back the page to review what we have read, turn forward to see a conclusion and stop to ponder a particular statement.77 Although all of this is possible on the web, it's not as easy. The text is largely performative, we click to read, we click to move on, but this can get confusing. Even as experienced users of the web,we are all familiar with that "lost" feeling while surfing the web. We lose register, moving backwards is not easy without starting all over again. This has never and will never happen in print, merely by flicking we always know where we are. By the weight and size of the publication we know what's in store. This is not the case on the web. There's nothing to feel or grasp and we rarely know where we are in the grand scale of things. Print is also a very fast interface. Octavo magazine published their eighth and final issue completely on CDRom. It contained 2,500 words and had this been presented as a magazine article it could be read in 10 minutes. However to read them all on CDRom takes 40 minutes.78

The navigation on digital media is unique however. It allows a user to follow his/her desired path through information. The web allows freedom of movement within screens, and hyperlinks allow us to cross reference topics. This "hypernavigation" is especially useful when researching and searching through databases and archives. This would be practically impossible with printed material.

LEGIBILITY & READABILITY

There is also the obvious problem of reading large amounts of text off a screen. It is not pleasing to the eye and it is off-putting to most users. The legibility and readability of text on a screen compared to text on a printed page is hugely different. Legibility is concerned with the forms of the letters, the type size, the font and the spacing between the characters. Text should be large enough and distinct enough for the reader to discriminate individual words and letters. Because the text defaults to 12pt Times and Courier which are both easily read fonts, and because the user can adjust the size of the text within the browser window at the click of a button, this problem does not occur frequently on the web. Another reason for this could be that the majority of people using the Internet or a digital media are young people, with in general, good eyesight. However, it is a consideration designers must face when designing for print because it is generally not within the readers' capabilities to change the size of a font on paper. Irish designer, Peter Maybury, describes how, when he designs for Code magazine "since the audience is rather young, I don¹t have to consider people's eyesight too much."79 The target audience has a direct influence on the size and the treatment of the type, as can be seen in other "youth culture" magazines such as Ray Gun.

The arguments surrounding Ray Gun and David Carson which were referred to in Chapter One, does not always apply on the web. Any typography, other than the Times or Courier text, must be designed as a graphics file which takes up memory and takes time to download. So to avoid long downloading time, most sites avoid any experimental typography.

Readability takes legibility a step further. It is the quality that makes text easy to read, inviting and pleasurable to the eye. Text should be read smoothly and easily by the reader. We read text in a group of words within one eye span and then move our eyes along the line to the next group of words. A normal eye span is between 12 and 15 picas wide. Our eyes feel comfortable reading up to two eye spans in one line, but anything more requires head movement which tires a reader quickly. An average line should contain about 8 - 10 words.80 This also ensures that the reader upon finishing one line can smoothly continue onto the next line without losing rhythm. The language of the web is important. Long texts do not suit the screen, shorter, snappier sentences work better.

The font is also important in achieving good readability. It has been said that reading long passages of sans serif type can be tiring; that the horizontal strokes on serif faces tend to help horizontal eye movement, while there is not enough visual interest in sans serif to sustain a reader's attention because of the evenness in weight and colour. It is therefore important to establish the nature of the text and the context in which it will be read. In general serif faces such as Times or Bodoni are used for long texts like novels while faces such as Helvetica are used for shorter pieces and headlines.

Not all of this is directly relevant to websites, considering the current limitations which HTML presents, but the layout of the text is important. Not everyone considers this unwritten rule of two eye spans. Many pages of websites stretch the text across the whole of the page, covering more than two eye spans. This results in a broken rhythm for the reader. Figure 64 shows single spaced text (12pt Times) stretched right across the page for more than two eye spans. The quantity of text is overwhelming and is very difficult to read off a screen. Figure 65 is a bit better, the text is double spaced and so allows our eyes to travel from one line to the next easily. However, it still requires a lot of movement by our eyes and so it is not good for large quantities of text. Figures 66 and 67 show the same text at two eye spans, both single and double spaced. Both are easier to read but the double spaced text is still slightly more appealing to read. There is more white space around the text and it looks less cluttered.

Many web designers today have a rule of thumb, which forbids more than 150 - 200 words on a page. This entices the reader to read and if they want more they can click to go further on. This naturally would have to be on a site with excellent navigation to ensure that the reader is never more than one or two clicks away from a homepage. However not everyone is of this opinion. Tim Jackson, in his article, "Rules for a Readable Site" published in the Financial Times, claims the best option is to put as much information as possible on each page, to reduce the number of pages and clicking.81 However the general opinion is that "less is more".

Colour is an important feature, especially on the web. Many sites are hard to read simply because the designer has made the background stronger than the text. Patterned backgrounds with text on top are very difficult to read while clashing background and text colours are jarring to the eye. These difficulties are illustrated on the CDRom accompanying this thesis.

INTERACTIVITY & MULTIMEDIA

Interactivity and multimedia are major advantages of digital media. The benefits of interactivity for the publishers have already been mentioned in Chapter One. However, interactivity also benefits the user greatly. No other medium up to now has given the user such control. Radio, television and print offer a choice but the user cannot change the medium in any way. Digital media gives the user a means of control over an outcome.

Multimedia avails of the opportunity to add sound, video and animation. Time becomes an important factor in the design and this helps provide more of an "experience" for the user. Multimedia could be seen as a tool for the reluctant reader, the reader who is daunted by columns of boring grey text, the reader who would probably prefer to be watching television. Technology is still limited on the web for advanced features but there are many possibilities on CDRom. Technology on the web is fast developing and hopefully there will soon be less static sites and more dynamic and stimulating sites.

Interactivity and multimedia are also illustrated on the accompanying CDRom.

PERMANENCE

Print holds words better than the screen. It is an inherently stable medium; a tangible presence from which the reader expects permanence. The editor of the on-line music magazine mentioned previously in the text says that people "relate on a basic level better to holding something in their hands - and they can better remember how something looked and felt, when they want to refer back to it later, if it is in tangible form rather than if it is on a screen."82 The screen in contrast, is somewhat unstable. There is a loss of surface and this is sacrificed to speed, variation and animation. It can be said therefore that there is a particular type of text which is suited to the screen. Text which requires permanence, consistence and a material and textural presence is suited to print while text which relies on speed, multiplicity, indexation and mutation should venture to the screen.

72. Infoworld Electric, op.cit.

73. Appendix 7, op.cit

74. Appendix 2, op.cit.

75. Appendix 7, op.cit.

76. Interquest, A Paperless Office, (Nua Internet Surveys -11/5/98 ),visited - 19/1/99

77. William Owen, Experiments in Hypertype, Eye magazine, vol. 6, summer 1996

78. Linear Progression, Blueprint Magazine, Feb. 1993

79. Interview with Peter Maybury, Emigre No. 45

80. Nancy Ruenzel-Aldrich & John Fennell, Designer¹s Guide to Typography, Phaidon, UK, 1991, Pg. 18

81. Tim Jackson, Rules for a Readable Site, Financial Times

82. Appendix 1, op. cit.