Suspicious Death Scene Under Investigation
September 4
A new design blog, A Brief Message, launched today. Keeping guest editorials to under 200 words, the blog is aimed at featuring deep thoughts about design-related issues from people of all walks of life.
The site design itself is a lovely piece of work by Khoi Vinh and, under the editorial direction of Liz Danzico, can only grow to be a success. I will be checking regularly.
However, I laugh at the opening editorial which touches on the point that print is dead by way of David Carson’s book, The End of Print. As my friend, Katrina, said the concept of print being dead is “very bourgeois”.
Print is not dying. It’s simply becoming more special than it has been in generations. In the age of instant swapping of MP3s and movies, the entertainment industry is looking for value-added products.
For example, U2 released a collector’s edition of their latest albium that included a small, limited edition book to get die-hard fans to buy one or more versions of the album.
If print is dead or dying, the site’s design is proof enough that print design will live on in other media. The site, while looking very sharp, has roots in print design.
Take a gander at the design elements: grid layouts, short column widths, text wrapping, typefaces other than Georgia or Times, and so on. It oozes non-interactive style.
Also, if you resize the fonts of the browser, you will notice that the design of the site shows doesn’t shore up the design integrity when the browser’s default text is resize. As the text enlarges, it overlaps the images and making the editorial itself hard to read, but it gives the design a more dynamic flare.
If David Carson amusingly killed print, then I believe he might also enjoy this version of the site, too.
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One Response to “Suspicious Death Scene Under Investigation”
September 4th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Typography on the web will be so much better when all browsers support proper page, not text, zoom.
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