Selling Graphic and Web Design by Donald Sparkman

Author:Donald Sparkman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allworth Press

CHAPTER 11

* * *

WEB DESIGN MARKETING

STRATEGIES

An Interview with John Waters

of Whet Design, Inc.

To sell Web page design, you must be selling design, not technology, not programming, and especially not pretty pictures. This chapter will help you understand why design is the key word, not publication, Web annual report, corporate identity, or advertising design.

The Internet is changing, even as I write this chapter. This means you have to be aware of what is new, what works, what doesn’t work, and what has been discarded. The Internet is a simple concept that appears to be a miracle cure for all communications. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It is a jungle, and it can be a bottomless money-pit. Your success will come from guiding your client through this jungle.

The Olden Days

Prior to the mid-twentieth century, graphic designers did not exist the way they do today. While advertising agencies and illustrators produced intricate borders, hand-lettered text, and wonderful illustrations, they were not the people who were typically designing and setting the printed page. The “graphic designers” of the time were primarily typographers (who designed “typefaces” or fonts), typesetters (who set the lines of type), and printers (who printed the type onto a paper page). Some typographers worked independently, while others worked in type foundries. Typesetters and printers worked for typesetting companies, where practically all typesetting for publishers and advertisers was performed.

These typesetting companies transcribed and edited text, and handled the production of paper or film output. In the traditional hot-type letterpress, typesetters produced solid lines of text cast from rows of matrices. Each matrix was a block of metal—usually brass— with a letter engraved into it or stamped on it. Each line of the text was composed by means of a keyboard similar to a typewriter. The depression of a single key released the matrix of a character from the magazine that stored ninety characters. After a few rows of matrices were assembled, it was transferred mechanically to a mold-making device. An alloy was forced into the mold against the matrices and hardened almost immediately. The result was a bar with raised letters where the molten metal had filled the impressions of the letters.

After these metal bars were used to print a text, they would be dumped back into a pot to be melted down for use again. The freestanding unit used was a linotype machine and it was much faster than typesetting done by hand and required less of a staff.

The Revolution Will Be Computerized

The hot-type linotype system eventually began using a process called offset printing. Once the type was cast, it was inked and pressed onto clay-backed sheets of paper called “repros.” The repros were pasted onto paperboards and these became “mechanicals.” The mechanicals were photographed and became negatives used for offset printing. The negative would later be exposed to a photosensitized aluminum plate. The image of the text on this plate could be reproduced at will, much like a photograph. Headlines, however, were still set letter by letter; this was called foundry type.

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