Small Banners

My understanding of the visual language of the link banners clarified when I came across Elizabeth's link page. It is the clearest presentation of links both as an overall layout and as a focus on each banner. A great deal of the success is in the placement of each banner in the composition, whether done consciously or not.

It's significant that Elizabeth only used small banners. You would think that, due to the smaller size, these banners would get lost on the page. The opposite is the case. The smaller banners stand out and maintain their own presence more firmly than do their larger cousins.

I think the reason is, again, the nature of the glance. When someone looks at a screen, these smaller banners are small enough that the entire shape fits within the prime focal area, the visual "sweet spot" that gets particular emphasis in brain cycles. Her page prompted me to begin to think about the small banners as if they were visual words to be strung together to form phrases and sentences. In a very literal sense, Elizabeth's page uses this metaphor directly, constructing paragraphs of banners under a subject heading.

In a broader sense, the concept of the visual word can be used in the analysis of a rectalinear graphic field, such as a web page, to identify areas of focus and areas of transition and then to determine the structure and grammar of interaction between the visual words.

Much of the analysis of larger banners applies to these small banners. There are a couple of significant differences. First, animation works better on the small banners. On the large banners, the animation tends to be linear or narrative, and therefore reinforces the scan. On the small banners, there isn't the room to move, so the animation tends to be motion in place or a blink, front to back, up and down, or circular.

The aspect notable about the small banners is the lack of eyes. Typically, the images are so small that eyes do not stand out. I noticed a number of lips on the small banners, but lips do not bring the same subjective interaction that eyes do. When used well, however, the eyes still have impact even at this small scale.

If the small banner is a visual word, then the internal structure of the small banner design begs the questions of whether the subdivisions become visual letters. Though this is stretching the analogy too far, it does argue that there is a unit size of graphic design, particularly on a 72 dpi screen, below which a designer should not go. Detail gets lost and muddy, confusing the message rather than enhancing it with greater specificity.

In addition to holding a glance better than the larger banner, the size of the small banner is better if a designer wants to break out of the size. The expansion of the large banner, though interesting, can get out of hand and approaches the scale of true advertising banners. Two examples :

Unit of Design

As I was pondering the idea of the visual letter, I ran into a host of sites that use an even smaller size of link graphic. I think it makes sense to use a different term, such as unit of design, because these are so small that only one design element fits. The ones I found are all 31 x 31 (or 32 x 32 because the designer forget to subtract 2 pixels, one for each side, before adding a 1 pixel border). They tend to be two color, and the adventurous propogate the design in a range of hues.

While these work on the idea of a unit of design, I don't think the square format works successfully. The square is too static a shape. A unit shape should have a dynamic quality. The most direct way to do this is to unbalance the shape and make the two sides different lengths. Furthermore, the 31x31  square is an ordinary solution. It takes an existing dimension and replicates it. The more dynamic approach is to divide the long side of the small banner.

Assuming that 88x31 is something of a standard, a unit of design that works dynamically is 22 x 31 pixels. It is modular and a vertical shape out of which to make horizontal forms.

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