el­studio

The Need for Speed

Some years ago – back in the day when the internet only came in dialup and we all walked barefoot to school – I wrote a piece about images and the user experience.

The online journal Kairos published it.

Though many of us now have broadband connections – there is still some good thinking in here about when, and why, to use images online.

The 10,000-word question: Using images on the world-wide web

  • Wait of the web
  • Speed, the web’s most important design criterion
  • Images enhance recall
  • Illustration and redundancy
  • Save pictures for punch
  • Image do’s
    • Crop to reduce image size
    • Write to provide context for images
    • Think twice about using pictures of text
  • A plea for power