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The most important and perhaps most difficult first step for the designer who does not know HTML coding is to learn and embrace the code. Most hard core programmers will tell you that HTML is not a real programming language, it’s merely a markup code for defining page layouts. This is true, and is even stated in it’s full name Hyper Text Markup Language. However, while HTML is not a full programming environment like C, Java, or even Perl o JavaScript, it is a coding language, albeit a simple one. This last point should be emphasized to the designer. HTML is very simple. It is much harder to break down the invisible barrier between artists and programmers than it is for a designer to learn HTML. What designers must come to realize is that coding HTML is no more complex than Photoshop, and no less creative. However, HTML is programming, and the designer should not be frightened by this. Once HTML is mastered, other languages such as DHTML, StyleSheets, and JavaScript become much less intimidating.
The complaint I hear most often from Web designers is “I hate HTML code”. I think this oppinion originates in a deeply-rooted belief that HTML coding is a non-creative task. It’s a necessary evil of the Web that must be tollerated as a technical task of drudgery. I think this is indicative of the need for a change in thinking about HTML and about coding in general from the artist’s perspective.
Ask any programmer if their task is creative, and they most likely will answer yes. The way in which programmers code in Perl or C or Java is very individual. There are distinctive styles of coding, and there are unique approaches to solving programming problems. Designing an Oracle database is no less creative than designing a graphical user interface. In my experience there are many more programmers who are willing to cross over into design than designers who are willing to cross over into programming. This is why it is so vitally important for the Web artist to embrace the code.
When coding by hand, the designer will learn to visualize the text of the code in front of their eyes. A good way to work is with your text editor and Web browser open simultaneously. Especially handy are dual monitors, so you can have your HTML document in one monitor and your Web browser in the other. There should be frequent switching between applications, between text and browser, between code and visualization. When working this way for long periods of time, you may come to realize that the Web is a very peculiar medium, for the design is not in the browser but merely interpreted by the browser. The design is actually the code itself, and image source files that may be spread across folders on a hard drive or even on distant servers across the Web. The visual design is actually an ethereal, imagined thing until it is illustratively interpreted by the browser. The actual design is a bunch of hypertext and scattered documents holding an idea of something visual. This requires, on the part of the artist and programmer, abstract thinking. The Web is abstract, so the idea that Web design is an abstract art is a compelling concept to understand and assimilate.
Whether you are new to HTML or have been using it for years, the single most important element to pay attention to is the table. The table, both conceptually and practically, is the protein cell of life on the Web: it plays a role in nearly every Web page. The table allows the designer to divide up parts of the page into a grid in order to organize the graphics and text on the page as well as weild control over the layout. Tables can be very simple, with only one row and a couple of table cells, or they can be highly complex, employing rowspans and colspans or even tables nested inside tables. You should practice coding tables by hand using SimpleText or BBEdit. You should practice drawing tables on paper and then writing in the appropriate HTML tags on top of them. You should dream in tables and be obssessed. The Cartesian grid is your friend.
One of the important things that a table does is it allows you to slice up your graphics into a puzzle of interlocking pieces so that they can share horizontal space with other elements such as text, forms, QuickTime movies, etcetera. By employing this method, your design layout may appear to transcend the lines of the grid. Your puzzle pieces may contain parts of a curve that seem to defy the grid. It’s an illusion that the viewer will readily accept, but as the artist you must be aware of the illusion. When you look at a Web page your mind’s eye should be deciphering the table structure. And when you begin to design a new Web page in Photoshop or scribbling on a cocktail napkin you should be thinking of tables. If you design something that doesn’t work in a table, then you probably aren’t designing for the Web.
Another creative approach to working with tables is to use the Cartesian grid as a integral part of your design. This will produce designs that are more geometric, but it also opens the possibility of using colored table cells, whose width and height can be controlled by a transparent GIF, as graphical elements. Using these embedded elements as a part of your graphics greatly reduces the weight of the page and improves viewability.
Information architecture is another area that the Web artist should be aware of, if not delve in to. Information architecture, often misinterpreted by people in Marketing and Product Management, is the design and organization of information in a site. Information may be defined by Web pages, database information, and user defined variables. Information architecture is most often carried out with tree diagrams and flow charts.
However, the significance of Information architecture as a creative exercise cannot be overlooked, for Web pages do not exist in isolation. They are part of a time-based experience in which the end product is a co-construction of the site design by designers and programmers combined with the browser’s interpretation of the code and the user’s active interjection.
The artist has little to no control over the user and the client browser and platform. What the artist does have control over are the graphics, the code, and the Information architecture. That is why it is important to mention it here, because Information architecture is the way in which the artist can co-determine the user’s experience over time. Normally static, graphic design for the Web can be thought of as something much more dynamic. There are the dymanics of motion and sound media on the page itself, such as GIF animations and embedded QuickTime Movies, but there is also the dynamic of multiple pages forming a user’s experience. This might be compared to the experience a person might have in turning the pages of a book, except with the Web the experience is not limited to linear progression. That is why the concept of navigation is so prevalent on the Web, because the user is always faced with a series of multiple choices. They can click on any number of hyperlinks, they can click to go back, they can click to go forward, or they can click on a bookmark and make a hyperjump to some totally different site. Being cognizant of the highly dynamic nature of the Web as a whole is important for the artist in terms of their graphic design and their coding. The Web artist should be familiar with and think about information architecture. In the mixed metaphors of the Web, the page is but a room in the architectural ediface of the site.
The burden is on the artist to know his or her medium. You cannot hand off your graphics to a programmer, let them translate it into HTML, and then call yourself a Web artist. Likewise you cannot hide behind a WYSIWYG application, sequestered from the code that is the very essence of the medium. Become a master of HTML, use it creatively as you would use a paintbrush or a camera. Learn to think abstractly. Designing in HTML is a synesthetic experience, for the image is the code and the code is the image. You may have to cross a few wires in your brain, but you can do it. There are a few Web artists out there doing it, and the next generation of Web artists, unencumbered by the baggage of old mediums, will surely embody these qualities.
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