I was reading the newspaper online the other day, and part way through the article, I saw something move in my peripheral vision. Ignoring it, I read on, but there it was again - movement. It seemed to be coming from the Lamisil ad.
At the top of the ad was a digital drawing of a big toe, its flesh rose-colored, suggestive of infection. The nail was yellowed, the hues of the ad garish. Nothing, however, seemed to be moving. Below the infected toe was a gremlin. Its name, according to the ad, was “Digger,” and I would be able to access its “full story” by clicking on a little orange arrow. I stared at the gremlin just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. It remained static for a full 10 seconds until - its eyes blinked!
Admittedly, I am new to the animation that proliferates the Web now. I only recently upgraded my circa 1996 homebuilt computer to a newer, more powerful homebuilt that is equipped to handle animation and video. Consequently, I’d missed out on the slow advent of moving images on the Web, instead experiencing them in one shocking exposure, making me feel a bit like Miles Monroe waking up in Sleeper.
Since upgrading, it’s been non-stop visual vertigo. I research hedge funds while ignoring a dancing couple. While reading about investment fraud, I try not to become distracted by a stockbroker holding an umbrella in a blizzard. After just a few months, I’ve grown weary of the animation clichés. I can’t tell you how many miniature cars have zipped across the top of my screen.
Online text itself is always sans serif, which seems only to add insult to injury, as everybody knows that sans serif fonts—those like Arial without the little serifs to guide the eye—are more difficult to read. It hardly seems fair to expect text, especially sans serif text, to compete with the spectre of a diseased toe.
The Wikipedians tell me, however, that “sans serif fonts have become the de facto standard for body text on-screen.” Apparently, the serifs don’t read well on monitors. On television, they have been known to flicker, much like Digger’s eyes. However, the wisdom of the Wiki collective notwithstanding, my favorite Web sites tend toward serifs like Garamond and Times New Roman. Text issues aside, is it really necessary for ads to jump and blink and cavort? Must arrows swish by, balls bounce, and signs flash?
From a commercial standpoint, of course it is. Digger blinked - and I looked.
The New York Times recently featured a story on the website LowerMyBills and its notorious Web ads filled with the silhouettes of dancing cowboys. According to the company the ads work—and Web ad experts agree—despite numerous reader complaints across blogs and elsewhere online.
Web newspapers today do not constitute level playing fields. The non-commercial information, the news, and the story must compete with moving images like the broker and his snow umbrella or the eyes of a gremlin. Text simply cannot compete with colorful movement in one’s peripheral vision, no matter how well written. This means we are being cajoled, seduced, and driven against our will to look at things we did not click there to see.
What is the answer? Should news articles also move?
They’re working on that. More video clips and less text. The only problem is, I don’t want my newspaper stories to move. I want the stories to move me.
Article comments