Class Project: MEVO Website

TC 461: Advanced Web Design class of Spring 2010 designed the new website for the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory. Built on a Joomla CMS plaftorm, the site features galleries that draw images from Picassa, streaming feeds from the MEVO Facebook page as well as from instruments at Mount Erebus in Antarctica. Click here to see it for yourself.

Current Project

I've been most recently asked to design an interface for a set of digital bulletin boards used in Fidel Center at New Mexico Tech. The bulletin boards will feature touchscreen interaction and will allow users to view current events, various school-related media, advertisements for local organizations, and a streaming feed from the Facebook page. I'll update as the work progresses.

Consider Font and Page Size When Writing for the Web

Clinton R. Lanier

Font type and size. What boring elements, but what important ingredients in any written communication. We often don't notice font, even when we can't read it: it's almost completely transparent. Writing for the web however forces us to use a completely different set of rules, and those rules created for hard copy writing don't really apply any more.

For example, when writing for print you should really use a Times-like font when writing, because the slight serifs (the small marks at the end of each leg of a letter) allow the reader to quickly separate and identify the letters more quickly than any other letter. This is part of the meta-information of a document: it facilitates meaning without meaning something itself.

However, the rule is different for the web. Researchers have found that sans-serif fonts, specifically Verdana or Helvetica, work the best. People can more easily read on the screen when using these fonts. Thus, when setting font type, these are perhaps the best used.

Actually many specify "verdana, sans-serif" just to be safe. In such a case, if verdana is not available, the available sans-serif will be displayed instead. This might be a trend since web design is design after all, but research has demonstrated that sans-serifs seem to enhance understanding when reading online information.

Maybe it has something to do with how we read online. We scan for information. When we find that information we concentrate on it and then move on. We tend to skip to topic sentences throughout a page. Thus, perhaps words in san-serifs stand out more. And because we aren't reading an immense amount of text, we don't need the same strategies we use when reading hard copy documents (with which we typically read much more than we do online anyway). Read more...