quote:

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Originally posted by Teshi:
...I still have issues with the two different colour green ovals, to put a totally colour-based POV on it.

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Ugh. Me too. And the font for "Orson Scott Card's" looks out of place, especially with the underlining.
 

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Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
 
What in the world? What is this?
 

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Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
 
It's the website for OSC's new online fiction magazine.
 

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Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
 
Ah.

Yeah, they need to get rid of the puke green.
 

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Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
 
I don't have any major problems with it (but I'm easy to please).

Tom, you often point out what you consider to be "bad design" in web sites. I would be interested in seeing you link to a few that you consider to be "good design" so I can compare what you think is good and bad.

FG
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
I still say the motif of the cover page shouldn't revolve exclusively around OSC's books, since the magazine itself doesn't revolve exclusively around his books.
 

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Posted by Diosmel Duda (Member # 2180) on :
 
I agree.
 

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Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
 
Other than fugu13's suggestion of reverse ordering so that the newest issue is always on top, the site looks fairly clean to me.
But then, I hate sites which look like "Hey, look at me. I'm a webdesigner earning his keep by putting tons of unnecessary flotsam&jetsam on this page so the owner will think he's getting his money's worth of cool stuff." even though all the extraneous clutter will create extra owner uploading cost and extra customer downloading time while making it more difficult for the browsing public to read and use the site, which is the opposite of what any sane owner would want.*

About the only change I would suggest at present is purely aesthetic: shrinking the size of the top and left border illustrations so that they look more abstract, ala the illustrative "woodcut" publishing house logos often found in older books.
And even I don't trust my artistic sensibilities to seduce the tastes of the general public.

While some of the other suggested "improvements" might actually be improvements, I'd wait for an actual page to look at before making changes: eg (using underscores to represent the extended blank space)

Title _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ by Author
Title _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ by Author
looks considerably different than
The Wine has Been Left Open Too Long and the Memory has Gone Flat _ _ _ by Harlan Ellison
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ by Paul Zindell

* Yep, that was a deliberately clunky sentence.

[ September 29, 2005, 03:15 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
 

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Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
 
Hmm yeah, the characters would acutally probably look better with less color, more monochromatic like an actual wood cut, then they wouldn't look like bad Sunday school lesson props anymore.

AJ
 

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Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
Note, aspectre, that almost everything I suggested involved removing something . There are plenty of people who call themselves designers who put a whole bunch of stuff up on sites, but good designers realize that design is not about decoration, but matching form and function.

The title/author mismatch can be taken care of by ensuring a minimum reasonable width between the longest title and the author information; having a gigantic fixed width makes it hard to read.

Actually, using a series of . . . . or other visual indicator going partway across the space would do wonders for making it readable.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Sites I think exhibit good web design:

Google
Amazon
iVillage
Hatrack River
NASA
Viewpoint
Flickr

Note that I have some quibbles with all of these, but that's because it's easier to quibble than to like something wholeheartedly.
 

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Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
 
Nice to know you like Hatrack!

I love Google. So simple, so clean. I wish more were that way.

However, I view Amazon as almost the opposite. They have totally cluttered up their site from the way it was originally.......

I will have to look up the others....

FG
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Amazon's going downhill, true. It's because, like eBay, they're trying to offer too much, and trying to make it all visible on the same page. I think the best way to do this is through drop-down or collapsible menus, but this would lock out people with older browsers -- who, in the case of eBay or Amazon, are likely to be customers.
 

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Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
 
Personally, I think the OSCstory-referential illustrations-as-logos belong.
Other than the authors chosen for publication and possibly a few of their friends, readers will be coming to the site because of OSC's imprimateur, and it's implication that the stories will be within the spirit of OSC's writings.

There are thousands of sites for fiction of one sort or another, and hundreds containing at least a few stories by published authors. Problem is that, except possibly for a handful of fans, those authors aren't recognized Names.
Would you read a story by aspectre? And that's even if you somehow stumbled on a site which contained it. Heck, I probably wouldn't read it. Except to find out if and what I'd been sleep-typing and sleep-mailing.

Ya need a Name to draw readers into a fiction site, especially a new one. And through serendipity -- having honed ones talents to be capable of exploiting luck when luck occurs -- OSC happens to be a Name.
And is willing to lend his Name to the promotion of lesser known authors. That being the case, the more OSC reminds casual browsers that a site is his site, the better it is for the authors being showcased.

Besides, as an even more purely practical point, the more OSC self-promotes, the easier it is to argue that the site is part of his business* -- even as a loss leader -- for the accompanying tax deductions, and not just a hobby for which expenses can't be deducted.
And the less it costs OSC to run the site, the more likely it is that it will remain on-line. Which is another big plus for the showcased authors.

* Writing itself is an avocation, a hobby, often more like a full-blown compulsion.
The business of authors is selling what they write.

[ September 29, 2005, 04:12 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
I think the occasional OSC illustration belongs. I think the illustrations in question are unnerving and creepy, though.
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 

quote:

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Other than the authors chosen for publication and possibly a few of their friends, readers will be coming to the site because of OSC's imprimateur, and it's implication that the stories will be within the spirit of OSC's writings.

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I never read Asimov's because of Asimov. Quite frankly, I don't care for him.

I read Asimov's because of the stories and the articles and the writing.

Even when Asimov was alive, the magazine wasn't about him. He wrote his editorials, but his 'spirit' certainly didn't seem to suffuse the magazine. The cover of the magazine certainly wsan't all about Asimov and didn't try to convey the message that it was all about Asimov.

What I'm getting from the cover page is that the Medicine Show is going to be around OSC, that the e-zine isn't going to be about SF/Fantasy as it is about OSC. So, unless I'm a big fan and I just want to get more OSC, I wouldn't subscribe.

I agree with Tom that the occasional illustration is fine. However, I would do it in a much more deft way. Perhaps a picture of something AI Jane-ish pulling back a curtain into something that suggested a collage of fantastic possibilities. Maybe not even that specific.

I don't know. It's kind of presumptious for me to say anything. It's not my problem. I'm just thinking out loud.

I wish OSC the best of luck with this. Maybe he can succeed where Ellen Datlow and others have failed.
 

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Posted by Wonder Dog (Member # 5691) on :
 
Okay, all taste considerations aside, there are some very BAD design choices beind made on that site.

1) Too Many Fonts! You've got a sans-serif (Arial?) font mixed with at least two different serif fonts (Times and that funky one in the name plaque/logo). The one funky font MIGHT be okay if you kept the rest of the type sans-serif. On that note, your art does not mix well with serif fonts - blocky, simple art needs blocky, simple text. So ditch the Times New Roman or whatever it is.

2) The colour pallette values work, but needs more space to be effective. Centering the whole page, or at least getting it away from the left and top edges of the screen will help the colours work better with the background. That goes for the illustrations as well - if you keep 'em, give 'em more space. You don't have to give them a lot more space, just more than they have now.

3) Using white as a background for your readable text may seem like a safe bet, but in this case it is definitley contrasting too much with the graphic border. Try picking a neutral colour from your pallette, pull down the saturation, and change your type colour to create a nice contrast. You should be able to do all that while staying withing the colour space of your design, and it would really help unify the whole thing.

On the upside, I acutally dig the art style, and think it could be very nice if the site layout was reworked a bit.
 

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Posted by Diosmel Duda (Member # 2180) on :
 
Also, it needs a good proofread.
 

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Posted by OlavMah (Member # 756) on :
 

quote:

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Maybe he can succeed where Ellen Datlow and others have failed.

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I wouldn't call SciFiction a "failure". First online pro market to be recognized by SFWA and still one of the highest paying markets in the field? I'd say SciFiction, Strange Horizons, ChiZine, and Infinite Matrix are all good examples that online publishing is a viable market.
 

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Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
 
Uh.... Wonder Dog? All that advice from someone who uses Notebook Paper background on their own site????


 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
I wasn't referring to SciFiction, OlavMah. I was referring to Even Horizon and Omni's e-zine.

I actually had no idea those sites existed. Thanks for pointing them out to me.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Many people break all the principles of site design on their own site, Farmgirl. My own site does so DELIBERATELY, for a number of reasons; I would never recommend that a client visit my page to get an idea of what I normally design.
 

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Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
Its worth pointing out that two common ways of determining if a design was not done by a professional are checking the font size/spacing and the contrast of colors. If the fonts are large but not very spaced out, its an amateur. If the fonts are small with more space, its someone who knows typography. If the colors are very high contrast, its not a professional.
 

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Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
 
Why do you deliberately break all the principles of site design, Tom?
 

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Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
Because its fun, and experimenting with rule violations is one way to find new rules.

Plus, the rules sometimes should be violated, and determining when and how that is appropriate requires violating them a lot in practice and seeing what that leads to.

But on a commercial site which is based around easy, comfortable, regular access to periodically updated, presentationally sensitive information, its not a time to be experimental (unless that's what you're selling).
 

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Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
 
As kat said in another thread, personal sites are for playing. They’re where you get to do all the stuff that you think looks kind of fun but isn’t very professional.
 

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Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
 

quote:

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Because its fun, and experimenting with rule violations is one way to find new rules.

Plus, the rules sometimes should be violated, and determining when and how that is appropriate requires violating them a lot in practice and seeing what that leads to.

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Or, as I tell my theory students, you have to learn the rules so that you can know good times and reasons for breaking them.
 

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Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
 
The only thing I didn't like was that either the font for "Uncle Orsons Intergalactive Medicine Show" or the style of the frame illustrations would need to change. It looked like it had been written by hand with a mouse, if you know what I mean. Which could be an okay look if it weren't the only thing on the page done that way. I know it is supposed to look like iron pen on parchment, but then it shouldn't be white on green.

Also, the picture of Alvin and Arthur Stewart brought to mind some of the accusations during the witch trial. But that's probably just my OCD. I'm not really sure what would be better. It depends on what the picture is trying to convey. I mean, I didn't mind the Crystal City cover, so there you go.
 

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Posted by Zalmoxis (Member # 2327) on :
 
I'm a content guy -- not a design guy.

But I still have to agree with Tom and fugu.

A couple of online magazines where I think the design works -- and by that I essentially mean that navigation is decent and the design complements the content.

Bookslut

Slant

Flak Magazine

EDIT: obviously these sites betray my own biases in design -- but they're still good models of how to arrange content.

Obviously, there's only so much time and money that OSC is going to be able to put into design issues.

But even one of the many free templates available would be better that what's there now. There are a lot of designs on Zen Garden that I don't like. But that's a good place to start.

It's not so much the look I object to as the navigation and layout.
 

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Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
 


Zal linked to porn!
 

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Posted by IanO (Member # 186) on :
 
I can figure out everyone of the book illustrations- except the woman in the spoon.

What the heck is that?
 

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Posted by Zalmoxis (Member # 2327) on :
 
BTW, do not miss the Bookslut interview with Susanna Clarke.

Here's one part of it:

quote:

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Fans of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell are very polite. They are charming and highly intelligent. They have excellent dress-sense, and are kind to animals and small children

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Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
 
When you begin a new site with a wonderful design, most people will take it for granted.

But,

If you start out with a not-so-great design, and then improve it later, everyone will just gush about how wonderful the new design is, and kudos to the designer, it will give the letters column something to print, and spark all kinds of lively debate.

Could it be that the design is less than perfect by design?
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
Those emperor clothes look great, don't they?
 

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Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
 
Spectacular!
 

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Posted by Zalmoxis (Member # 2327) on :
 
A minor thing, but why is the head (the browser title) "Please Log In"?
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 

 

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Posted by OlavMah (Member # 756) on :
 

quote:

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I actually had no idea those sites existed. Thanks for pointing them out to me.

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quote:

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Originally posted by fugu13:
Because its fun, and experimenting with rule violations is one way to find new rules.

Plus, the rules sometimes should be violated, and determining when and how that is appropriate requires violating them a lot in practice and seeing what that leads to.

But on a commercial site which is based around easy, comfortable, regular access to periodically updated, presentationally sensitive information, its not a time to be experimental (unless that's what you're selling).

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quote:

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Tom just said that he broke the rules deliberately for a number of reasons, and I wanted to know what the reasons were.

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He's a rebel. Must he have a cause?
 

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Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
 
Tom is as much of a rebel as I am.

He always has good reasons for doing things.
 

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Posted by Hamson (Member # 7808) on :
 

quote:

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Hmm yeah, the characters would acutally probably look better with less color, more monochromatic like an actual wood cut, then they wouldn't look like bad Sunday school lesson props anymore.

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Agreed.

The fonts should go together better also, like some of you said. I'm not quite sure what kind of feel the whole site is going for.
 

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Posted by Zalmoxis (Member # 2327) on :
 
This is a complete tangent, but I checked out Strange Horizons (btw, comparing Web stats to subscribers is always a dubious thing -- not that I'm casting asperions on Strange Horizons. I haven't read enough of its content to make a judgement) and, this part of a review of a novel called _The Princess of Roumania_ totally cracked me up.

quote:

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In Park's story, Roumania is meant to evoke the real Romania. It adds a sense of old-world mystique to the wondrous quality normally associated with a fantasy setting. The novel is not harmed by Park's never having visited the real-world Romania. He has used his imagination to create a world, and then mixed it with names and reputations of real people and places. ....

One of those who would use Miranda to help achieve her own ambitions is the Baroness Ceausescu.

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I'm sorry, but that's just hilarious. I mean calling your villainess "Baroness Ceausescu"? Not very subtle. In fact, it's a downright insult to those who actually suffered under that hands of Elena Ceaushescu -- some of them people I know.

Then again, Romania and/or Romanian characters get (mis)used all the time in bad fantasy/action adventure. Even OSC is not immune to this trope.
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
Did you ever read Children of the Night by Dan Simmons, Zalmoxis?
 

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Posted by Wonder Dog (Member # 5691) on :
 
Farmgirl: You have a good point. But I built that over a year and a half ago, and I've learned a lot since then.

(And besides, looking back, while it may be sloppy, my old portfolio site still has unity and gestalt. )
 

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Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Tante Shvester:
He's a rebel. Must he have a cause?

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Tante, you're tearing me apart.
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Zal...it is only obvious who the original was, which I didn't.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Why my site is poorly designed:

1) No one is paying me to do it, so I don't take it seriously. I have not run any usability tests on my site, or made any attempt to keep it ADA-compliant.

2) Because I'm not taking it seriously, I can play around with it all I want. (I often do this completely behind the scenes; in the last year, I've installed two different CMS packages and three different image galleries, just to see how they all differed.)

3) Because it's a nice chance for me to indulge all those impulses I have to do something "quirky" and "nifty" and "creative" -- like a completely unfriendly, slow-loading imagemap splash page with unlabeled links, which in itself breaks around seven or eight fundamental rules of web design -- so that when I get the itch to make an icon that bounces or squeaks or something when someone mouses over it, I can do it on MY site and not inflict it on someone who paid me money.

4) So I can be all self-effacing when I talk about web design, and not have to even PRETEND that my personal website should be used as an example of professional work.

5) I'm really, really fond of Entre les trous de memoire, and haven't been able to bring myself to part with it over the last decade, which was when I scanned it in -- in eight parts -- from a crumpled poster I borrowed from an old girlfriend and stuck it on the web. It's deeply unnerving to think that the picture of me in that mirror is ten years old now. For the same reason, I have a Goth page with revolving skulls and dripping blood bars -- remember the age of the animated horizontal dividing bar? -- still on the site, although it's well-hidden.

[ September 29, 2005, 08:55 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
 

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Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
 
I am responding here primarily to the initial post, the "eye-crushingly ugly" comment by Tom Davidson.

Let's see ... the site is still under construction. Do you know which elements are place-holders? I didn't think so.

The art was commissioned BY ME following MY INSTRUCTIONS. I like it. And guess what - I own it, I'm paying for it, and I'm the only one who has a vote.

Don't like the fact that the pictures depict scenes from my work? Here's another fact you seem to forget: I can use images depicting my work without getting any author's permission. To me, it's free. Wow! Cheaper magazine! And guess what else: I'm proud of those stories. Isaac Asimov's magazine had his picture on every single cover. In my magazine, I have wonderful, imaginative cut-paper depictions of scenes from my stories. So at least you don't have to look at my face.

But getting back to Tom Davidson, let me ask you your motive in starting a thread to hatchet my new magazine to death before it even launches. At present I can only speculate on what twisted hunger inside you makes you come to my site and regularly attack me and all my works. Do you wish to make sure that my magazine is a failure? Encourage people to treat it with contempt even before we've launched it? Deprive the writers and illustrators of another market for their stories? What exactly is your plan?

If you really wanted it to be a success, you wouldn't trash it before it even opens. You wouldn't take special pains to create negative buzz. And it's hard to imagine anyone with a shred of courtesy using the magazine owner's own site to try to kill his magazine project before it's even born.

If you hate me and everything I do and everything I believe in so very much, Tom, as you have made abundantly clear in every post I've seen from you, despite pretenses to like this or that little bit here and there, why do you keep coming to my site? Stay away, and you don't have to look at anything so offensive again.

Meanwhile, I will try to struggle manfully on and create a magazine that pleases ME (the only standard that matters when I'm paying for it) and then hope I'll find readers who will forgive all my ghastly mistakes and still buy the magazine and read the stories and enjoy the illustrations.

But maybe you'll win, Tom. I'll give this a year, and if it's a failure, I might well have lost about $30,000 in payments to writers and artists and time spent by salaried employees. But there's this compensation at least. I'll know one person who'll be happy to see such an "eye-crushingly ugly" thing removed from the net. Someone will be happy if I fail. Makes me feel warm all over.
 

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Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
 
Man OSC, did you not read what Tom said???

quote:

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But I'm a bit concerned that the page, as it now stands, hovers at the very edge of eye-crushingly ugly -- which is a shame, because I'd really like to see it be a success.

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