Andy Clarke on Web Layout from Jeffrey Zeldman on Vimeo.
Andy Clarke shows how comic book artists use panel size to indicate how much time a reader is supposed to spend on a particular chunk of content. He argues that web layouts can work the same way. (Later in this talk, he'll show how.)
Andy Clarke: How often do we consider the space and the time that somebody is supposed to spend, or we want somebody to spend, looking at a particular panel. So if we look at something like this, there's a conversation going on at the bottom here. 'Actually, she turned out to be quite sweet. I actually took her out a few times.' 'Seriously?' 'No.' And it carries on. So those panels are smaller because we're supposed to take less time reading them. It's this flow and this rhythm. And this is something that comic books have done for a very, very long time. And it's something that potentially we can bring into the layouts that we make for the web.
Andy Clarke: How often do we consider the space and the time that somebody is supposed to spend, or we want somebody to spend, looking at a particular panel. So if we look at something like this, there's a conversation going on at the bottom here. 'Actually, she turned out to be quite sweet. I actually took her out a few times.' 'Seriously?' 'No.' And it carries on. So those panels are smaller because we're supposed to take less time reading them. It's this flow and this rhythm. And this is something that comic books have done for a very, very long time. And it's something that potentially we can bring into the layouts that we make for the web.