PAGE COMPOSITE, READABILITY, AND THE INTERNET
by Jon Mikelonis

Introduction
Whether a medical researcher is writing a paper, a consumer is comparison shopping, or an automotive restorer is hunting for obscure parts, the Internet has simplified the task of information gathering. In the same vein, by making more data accessible to more people and at a lower cost, the Internet has decreased the value of content traditionally sought through print formats. Consider the value of a bound dictionary today. Does the one sitting on your bookshelf carry the same intrinsic value it held prior to the advent of the Internet? Will a young scholar ever feel the need to buy a book containing an alphabetical listing of words and their meanings rather than simply using a web-based reference?

Businesses whose competitive advantage is the distribution of consolidated, qualified, and targeted information, through a physical format, are being threatened by the proliferation of the Internet. Supported by the fact that a majority of 18-34 year olds prefer to get their daily news through online sources; newspapers and periodicals are at the greatest risk of losing their market appeal and their advertising leverage. Traditional print media will sink unless their captains take a hard look at the usage behavior of the new medium and develop electronic offerings accordingly.

Despite the wealth of information available online for the consumer, well-produced print collateral still makes a huge impact due to the refined production practices of print. The meticulous page layout of Ford's 2005 Mustang GT Dealer Brochure is a fine example. Most web sites have yet to reach this level of page composition.

But something is flawed here, there must be. If it is true that an ever-increasing percentage of the information a researcher, student, consumer, or hobbyist needs is available through cyberspace, why is the periodical section at Barnes & Noble® still packed with magazine titles? Why is the glossy dealer brochure for the 2005 Mustang GT a strong aid of purchasing consideration for a prospective car buyer? Why is it that every Friday evening at Borders® there are people of all ages quietly thumbing through the periodicals that are supposedly in danger of being obsoleted by Internet blogs, peer-to-peer forums, comparison web sites, enthusiast web sites, and news portals? The fundamental reason lies in the refined production practices of printed media versus the embryonic production practices found in web site development.

The print industry has had almost 1000 years to fine tune the production practices that make most printed pages today aesthetically pleasant and readable.

Refinement of Print Production
Nearly 1000 years old, print is arguably one of the most mature industries in existence. In 1041 the Chinese invented moveable clay type and by 1440 Johannes Gutenberg completed the first printing press with adjustable metal type. What this means is that for 964 years, the typesetting, paragraph formatting, and overall page composition techniques that make printed pages pleasant and readable have been developed to near perfection. In fact, print media is so well-developed that as readers, we are conditioned to concentrate entirely on subject matter without the slightest critique of page composite, also known as page layout.

Page Composite definition - Publication-ready material consisting of properly formatted text, photographs, illustrations, numerical data, charts, and other graphical images. In the commercial print sector, the page composite is arranged in a balanced and readable fashion by a dedicated page compositor or desktop publisher.

Throughout history, publications that did not honor the essential techniques of an optimum page composite were forgotten or forced to adjust as readers subconsciously chose to buy magazines and newspapers whose format was orderly and attractive. Before any of us were born, the ideal measures of letter spacing, line spacing, column widths, column gutters, margins, type size, number of characters per line, line weight, and percentage of imagery-to-text that make "the perfect read", were long determined. Sure, page layouts found in periodicals and books today vary depending on the target audience. Some magazines, like People®, have broken the mold by using excessive photos and call-outs instead of longer text blocks. However, the more common formatting found in bound entities like Reader's Digest, Popular Mechanics, and the scholarly textbook, reflect what is considered readable by industry professionals, as well as target readers.

Over hundreds of years, magazine and book production has reached a state where it is now largely reserved for organizations composed of professionals educated in all aspects of the publishing process. The page compositor is an integral component of any staff in the business of creating well-produced commercial print media.

Why Are We Stumbling Over Page Composite Today?
Not until the proliferation of the Internet did today's researchers, consumers, and hobbyists suddenly become acutely aware of the "digital page composite", for which the Internet web page is easily the most common example. Within the web site production world, creating the visual portion of a web page is not typically referred to as page composition like it is in print. However, the arrangement of text, graphics, and photos in a balanced and orderly fashion is a fundamental requirement when designing anything intended for the word wide web, just like it is for a physical magazine.

So why have we become so critical of page composition with regard to the Internet and not with print? It's simple. The Internet has allowed everybody and anybody to "publish" to the web and while we savor, depend on, and often times prefer the wealth of information that now resides at our fingertips, we also despise it because much of it is incredibly distracting, poorly arranged, and downright overwhelming. Since much of web publishing is in the hands of professionals and nonprofessionals with little to no background in typesetting, paragraph formatting, and page composition, it seems that anything goes. So how did this happen? More importantly, why is it still happening at all levels including the web sites of the most prominent and financially secure global enterprises?

The Missing Link
There is no doubt, the Internet is a technological medium that requires the skills of a computer programmer, better known as a web developer. Like engineers, web developers have the ability to make things work. In the mid-90's it seemed that making a web site work was all that really mattered. The naive attitude spawned the birth of an occupation thought to be accomplished only by a "master of all things web" or a webmaster. The webmaster was assigned with the task of independently producing and maintaining a web site or web sites. Although convenient and inexpensive for an employer or company looking to outsource their online presence, having one person produce and maintain a web site can be compared to having a magazine single-handedly conceptualized, drafted, written, edited, illustrated, and produced by a magazinemaster. If there really was such a person, would you buy their magazine? Probably not. For that reason, the term "webmaster" is nearly unspoken today. Since then, the disciplines required to build a web site, the right way, have been segmented and defined even though a significant amount of overlap exists in job duties. The table below shows contemporary web occupations as seen by most web production teams and corporate human resource departments.

Typical Web Production Occupations

Web Developer
Designs, develops, and implements software packages for web sites. Troubleshoots, debugs and implements software code. Has knowledge of standard concepts, practices, and procedures within a particular field (i.e., SQL, C++, HTML, CGI and JavaScript).

Graphic Designer
Designs using graphic elements and type to communicate an idea or concept. While the graphic designer is often involved in creating web site graphics, the graphic design profession has it roots in print.

Visual Designer
Designs graphical elements specifically for digital media, primarily web sites. This includes the graphical aspects that contribute to a web site's "look and feel" (i.e., navigation controls and color schemes).

User Interface Designer
Responsible for the design of a system or interface with which a user has direct contact and with and which they interact to conduct activities. Typically, the term user interface design refers to those of computers, namely web sites. User Interface Designers can include web developers, interaction designers, graphic designers, and information designers.

Interaction Designer
Illuminates the relationship between people and the machines they use. While interaction design has a firm foundation in the theory, practice, and methodology of traditional user interface design, its focus is on defining the complex dialogues that occur between people and interactive devices of many types-from web sites to mobile communications devices to appliances.

Information Architect
Organizes, designs, and presents an information product to provide intuitive access and ease of use that meets the needs of the customer and of the end user. Information architecture typically comprises needs analysis, content identification and organization, navigational mapping, and physical layout.

Copywriter
Writes copy for advertising and marketing use, copy that's intended to persuade a reader to buy a product or service or otherwise take action.

Primarily suited for web site programming or web development, the webmaster fell short when it came to optimizing a web site's interactive function and especially its visual appeal. As a result, the graphic designer joined the game and many graphic designers morphed into permanent visual designers. Visual design is simply a term for graphic design applied to the web. Contrary to the webmaster, most visual designers struggled to program efficiently but were able to make web sites look good with the use of WYSIWYG web page editors. The introduction of the dedicated visual designer took the "look and feel" aspect of building a web site out of the hands of the webmaster and placed it into the hands of a more artistically inclined individual. At this point, a person with a webmaster's skill became a dedicated web site programmer or what is known today as the web developer. This is not to say that some unique individuals could not split the two fields of visual design and web development perfectly and perform satisfactory "hand" programming and good visual design. At well-structured and specialized Internet companies however, this is never the case. For these enterprises it has been proven that the best way to create a web site is to have dedicated web developers and visual designers as part of the team, as opposed to a group of webmasters.

Still, utilizing only web developers and visual designers to create a web site neglects the fundamental aspect of the web, this aspect is interactivity. The interactivity of the Internet was finally acknowledged as specialists with backgrounds in human factors and computers were introduced to the web production mix. These are the people that understand the cognitive psychology behind the way humans interface with ATM machines, cell phones, and electronic menus. They are commonly known as user interface designers. Working closely with visual designers and web developers, the user interface designer adds the necessary expertise to create usable pages. User interface designers create blueprints that visual designers and web developers reference to combine "front-end" experience and "back-end" functionality.

Web production has come a long way since the singular webmaster. By identifying its functions, the business world has almost completely defined the skills and specialists needed to produce and maintain a high-traffic, revenue generating, and brand building web site. Why "almost"? Because somewhere along the line, as specialties were assigned to web developers, visual designers, and user interface designers, somebody forgot to acknowledge the need of the dedicated page compositor. A person whose absolute responsibility is the balanced arrangement of the content that make a web page or web site readable.

Although a page compositor's skills are partly offered by the visual designer and partly by the user interface designer, neither professional considers page layout and readability their primary duty. Falling somewhere between art and science, the page compositor's aptitude for adapting print media's proven typesetting, paragraph formatting, and keen sense of balanced page layout to a web page, is required. The need is evidenced by the large number of unsatisfactory commercial web pages and the number of people who still turn to print media, even in those instances when the Internet is more convenient.

While the readability of the printed page still surpasses the readability of the web page, today's consumers are absorbed with the speed, convenience, and searchability of the Internet.

Conclusion
While the average readability of the printed page still surpasses the average readability of the web page, today's consumers are absorbed with the speed, convenience, and searchability of the Internet. By now, any successful business has acknowledged the Internet's influence on buying behavior by developing their own web presence. Consumers are clearly ignoring the vast amount of poorly arranged information found online while they quickly seek out information that is indeed intelligible. This is why a tremendous opportunity exists for the organization whose web site honors the value of traditional page composite. Here are a few companies who've made that step:

www.eddiebauer.com - It's no wonder that a company whose primary business is convincing consumers to buy clothes remotely through a mail order catalog has made a special effort to incorporate traditional page composite principles into their web site.

www.adobe.com - Would you expect anything less from the leading company in digital and print publishing software? This page from the Adobe Corporation's web site uses perfectly arranged imagery, balanced use of typography, and the print world's very own "sidebar" to engage the reader.

www.3vr.com - In desktop publishing, it is recommended that you use no more than 60 characters per line to prevent the reader from losing their place while reading. This is how the 8.5" width dimension was determined for letter-sized paper. Web sites like 3VR Security incorporate the 60 character per line rule into their web page design.

The next time you find a web site that is as pleasant and readable as your favorite periodical or print publication, you can be sure that the web production team that created it incorporated an individual with a respect for traditional layout principles. More importantly, if you are a marketing professional concerned about the performance of your company's web site, take an inventory of the skills of each member of the production team responsible for the site. Sure, intuitive interfaces and polished graphic design are important but who is directly responsible for your web site's page composite and readability?

About the Author:
Jon Mikelonis is Co-Founder and Information Design Director at FordMuscle, a digital publication serving the "hands-on" Ford hobbyist with High Performance Technical Content. A graduate of California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo, Jon followed his instincts into a career in graphic communication. His passion for information design, the democratic nature of the Internet, and anything Ford, have been instrumental in positioning FordMuscle as a symbol of the future of automotive publishing for the performance aftermarket. If you have any questions or comments regarding this article please email jon@fordmuscle.com