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Communication design and motion graphics on the Web Synne Skjulstad

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To cite this article: Synne Skjulstad (2007) Communication design and motion graphics on the Web, Journal of Media Practice, 8:3, 359-378 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jmpr.8.3.359_1

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Journal of Media Practice Volume 8 Number 3 © Intellect Ltd 2007 Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jmpr.8.3.359/1

Communication design and motion graphics on the Web

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Synne Skjulstad University of Oslo Abstract

Keywords

Concerning the World Wide Web, little attention is given to textual analysis of websites from humanistic perspectives influenced by media practice. This article investigates the mediation of online portfolios of contemporary designers working with motion graphics. It sees digital mediations such media rich websites in terms of complexity-hybridity, and coherence–convergence. It uses those combined approaches to unsettle prevailing notions of web interfaces, and applies multilinear spatio-temporal montage to address designers’ inclusion of motion graphics in web design. The article also develops a Communication Design perspective in relation to wider online mediation.

motion graphics communication design web design mediation interface montage

Introduction Texts and practice in motion Digitally designed and mediated texts are increasingly complex and interlaced into existing practices, professions and disciplines (Manovich 2001, Gibbons 2005, Jenkins 2006). The wide distribution of such textual artefacts is one part of a rapidly changing cultural industries domain that crosses national borders and earlier patterns of ownership and production. As Lash and Lury (2007: 4) observe, within the global culture industries ‘. . . cultural objects are everywhere; as information, as communication, as branded products, as financial services, as media products, as transport and leisure services, cultural entities are no longer the exception: they are the rule’. In terms of media practices, the websites of motion graphics designers are particularly interesting as textual embodiments of contemporary media experimentation. They are also examples of practical and artistic expertise in emerging areas of ‘new’ media. That textual experimentation now occurs online and mixes a variety of still and dynamic media in the shape of motion graphics sites provides us with access to emerging practices in the multimodal expressions online. In the web portfolios of motion graphics designers, multiple representations and a medley of media coexist. As general users and as analysts of the Web we encounter for example a mix of live music-DJ-art-performances, artfully animated advertisements for sneakers, mainstream television advertisements, poetically animated advertisements for gin, and sub-cultural experimental expressions. These mediated representations are present in diverse assemblages of artistically and commercially interlinked cross-media texts. In media

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cultures in which cross-media texts such as these occur, design companies use web portfolios as a multimodal means for presenting, mediating and promoting their professional competence and artistry. Little research has been conducted into the emerging genre of the web design portfolio as part of changing media practices. Motion graphics is a fast developing area in which the experimental and commercial and communicative practices of designers, like earlier parts of the web, are developed slightly ahead of detailed analysis. In accounting for the emergence of new kinds of web texts – experimental ones that push the boundaries of media and design practice and knowledge – researchers tend to fall back on earlier disciplinary training and expertise. Online mediations are therefore often seen in relation to design traditions, domains, different media types, and their legacies in studies that accentuate a mix of textual components in reconfigurations and remediation (Bolter and Grusin 1999). Such a componential approach, which sees media as hybrid deviants of ‘pure forms’ (see Carroll 1985) can only partly explain the dynamic, kinetic character and process-driven communication design of many experimental web texts. This includes ones that incorporate motion graphics as part of ‘movement in the interface’ (Skjulstad and Morrison 2005). The now pervasive use of digital technologies across the development and circulation of media, in production and in participation, demand that media scholars develop concepts and frameworks with which to study emergent text forms and related communication. Changing media practices and their concomitant textual outcomes pose problems for media and communication studies. It is important that such texts are understood both textually and contextually. They offer us artefacts with which to engage as consumers and participants, researchers and designers, teachers and students. In addition to a focus on participation and the roles of users, both the uptake of digital technologies and their realisation as online communication pose new demands and challenges for the ‘. . . documentation, explanation and interpretation of design objects and their rationale’ (Oxman 2005: 230). These artefacts are the result of situated media practices. They are local in their physical settings of development, but more and more we may find that they are linked to professional mediations of communication design online and networked exchanges of practice-based knowledge between designers. Emerging practices then need to be seen as they are circulated, how they are and taken up, and through the ways in which they are modified. Many of the multi-faceted texts we now encounter transcend formats, media and discursive domains. One area in which there has been rapid development in online media production in recent years is motion graphics. Broadly, motion graphics is a term used to refer to mixed media texts that have dynamic qualities, appearing for example in advertising, music videos and most recently on the Web. Motion graphics texts are strongly graphical, but may co-appear and be linked with dynamic typography, still text and images, animation and video. These elements are placed in relations of coherence and distinction, drawing users into the interplay of designer’s articulations and their own activities. Motion graphics sites may also be designed to generate

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textual configurations independent of users; these too may then be influenced by users’ own activity. In contrast to a ‘broadcast’ view of mediation, I see motion graphics as integral parts of websites and their communication design. Such texts are designed to give users multiple modes and means of co-constructing meaning. This article is not on motion graphics per se, however, nor does it go into the activities of users; it refers to design for non-linear and kinetic use as communication design. A communication design perspective offers a counterweight to research in which the main focus is on functionality and usability, as is often the case in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). In applying a communication design approach to websites as mediated texts we may include a variety of interlinked elements. These elements are integral to web mediation. They tend to be left out of media related studies of new media, digital design as well as in accounts on media practice. These elements include graphic design, computer systems design and HCI. Dynamic and expressive communication designs on the web may also challenge our conceptualisations of websites and interface design. These conceptualisations have been built largely on page metaphors (Manovich 2001, Skjulstad 2004, Skjulstad and Morrison 2005, Skjulstad 2007a). These metaphors reflect the prevailing view of a shift from print to electronically mediated communication in the form of hypertext and hypermedia. Textual analysis as a method of investigating static texts partly falls short when applied to textual outcomes of transmedial practice as exemplified by motion graphics designers’ websites in which dynamic media are co-present with other modes of communication. In these websites, however, diverse media expressions converge into a single text – the website. Such texts are neither moulded on the page nor on the static screen and its related interface designs and information structures. As digital designs, motion graphics sites are geared towards enabling the articulation and expression of communicational content and form that connects and crosses media in the form of new mediational configurations. In contrast to a view on such dynamic web texts as predominantly hybrid and componential, we may study these texts as relations of multiple compositions geared towards an overall coherence. Yet it is through the expressive practices of motion graphics designers that I encounter these texts and find that they challenge prevailing analytical approaches to web design.

Focus and approaches My main research question concerns how coherence is realised mediationally in motion graphics websites. Below, I take up selected aspects of portfolios of web designers whose specialty is the design of motion graphics. Through close textual analysis I examine linkages and relations between kinetic and visual features of selected sites. In the domain of digital media, humanities-oriented researchers have taken up productive relations between media practice and media research in areas such as hypertext and hypermedia (e.g. Landow 1997, Liestøl 1999, Morrison 2003, Bolter 2003b). One of the main questions that face

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researchers investigating the ongoing emergence of digital media is how to take on board challenges that arise when drawing on knowledge derived from both theory and practice. Liestøl (2003) suggests we may borrow concepts from neighbouring disciplines, apply general approaches, such as for example semiotics, and through active synthesis include developers’ discourses into the subsequent analysis (Liestøl 2003). Following Liestøl, I refer to a body of work in digital media research that centres on the web. However, I also refer to earlier research, such as that of Eisenstein that relates to the topic of montage as it is applied in various art and design domains. My approach to textual analysis is further informed by my own practice and its role in my own interdisciplinary media research into digital communication (e.g. Skjulstad and Morrison 2005). Insights from such practice inform my overall aim of developing a broad perspective on communication design relating to the Web as well as contributing to analysis of motion graphics portfolios. I draw on my experience in practice-based research in domains such as interactive video and digital media in choreography and dance performance. This experience includes the design and implementation of a multi-level interface and articulation online via video in particular and the development of a collaborative dance work (see for example Skjulstad and Morrison 2005). In parallel with this digital production informed inquiry into communication design, I further incorporate knowledge from the development of web portfolio design since the late 1990s. From the close study of motion graphics texts and recent related research literature, I selected the core concepts of compositing and montage. These concepts are rooted in artistic media related practice in fields such as film-making, graphic design and art photography. However, it has been necessary to also develop a number of more specific concepts for the analysis. These are multilinear spatio-temporal montage and multilinear graphical montage. These concepts help in accounting for various multilinear segments in the spatio-temporal montage of motion graphics on the web. The concepts are applied by way of close textual analysis. They are discussed more fully with respect to a communication design perspective in the conclusion to the article.

Communication design and the Web On communication design The concept of communication design spans design practice and research in digital design and media domains. It denotes an expanded version of graphic design that focuses on communication more than decor (Frascara 2004). A communication design research perspective on web design, allows us to see how artefacts are designed to embody and enable communication. This approach helps us examine how aspects of design practice are inscribed within digital artefacts. These inscriptions may be investigated through textual analysis as well as by way of studies of designs in communicative use. While media texts such as magazine spreads and genres of TV shows have been widely studied in terms of communication, the importance of design for communication on the web is rarely taken up.

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Frascara (2004: 2) sees visual communication design as ‘. . . the action of conceiving, programming, projecting, and realizing visual communications that are usually produced through industrial means, and are aimed at broadcasting specific messages to specific sectors of the public.’ A communication design perspective, however, is applied here for the close textual analysis of websites.

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Beyond a clash of cultures Web design is a domain where professional cultures and conceptual frameworks clash. Often, these are polarised in terms of aesthetics and usability (Cloninger 2000, Wakeford 2000, Bolter and Gromala 2003). A communication design view may be said to umpire between these positions in its attention to mediated design and multimodal articulation (Skjulstad 2007a). However, what is challenging about the online portfolios of motion graphics designers is that they embody dynamic interfaces that depart from traditional, static page-like websites and related analyses. In dynamic interfaces, movement in the interface and in the mediation of ‘substance’ makes the division between the interface and content problematic (Manovich 2001). Conceptually, dynamic interfaces may be seen to be tied to the artistic technique of montage. Two different approaches may be referred to in the study of complex, digitally designed, emerging media forms. The first refers to a multiplicity of older media forms and their hybridisation. The second concerns the articulation of coherent mediations. In order to better understand montage in motion graphics sites, it is useful to distinguishing between these two approaches.

Hybridity, multiplicity and coherence on the Web Studies of new media within the humanities tend to regard complex crossmedia texts in terms of multiplicity and hybridity (Ross 2005, Bolter 2006, Friedberg 2006). Inquiries into contemporary web design tend to approach emergent texts as combinations of well-known media forms as hybrid combinations and modified versions. In digital design domains the concept of hybridity is widely applied as a denominator for the transgressive qualities of experimental texts and practices. Older media forms indirectly serve as conceptual backdrops, especially in terms of centralised mass mediations (Couldry 2006). At a point, reference to traditional ‘pure’ media is not particularly helpful in accounting for the emerging complexity of digitally designed media texts. This approach to media as hybrid and componential may be counterbalanced with a conception of dynamic texts as more than a sum of parts. In this view, websites are not predominantly hybrid and fragmented web texts, but may be regarded as coherent media texts or dynamic gestalts (Löwgren and Stolterman 2004: 137). Emerging mediated texts may be seen not only in relation to older, non-hybrid ones but may also be understood through the transversal co-articulation of elements from prior expressions and forms. In motion graphics websites, we see that designers draw together elements from diverse media traditions and practices. They craft these into coherent and dynamic compositions.

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Motion graphics as hybrid, coherent mediated designs Motion graphics embody a diversity of popular and sub-cultural mediated expressions. Considered under-researched (Manovich 2006a), motion graphics appear in music videos, television, advertisements on the Web, cinema, film titles and animated feature films. According to Goux and Houff (2003: 13), motion graphics is ‘Part advertising, entertainment, animation, videography, cinematography, editing, packaging, storytelling, art and craft, this medium may best be described, simply as design of the moment’. When motion graphics and web design melt into each other in complex, yet coherent unities, it becomes hard to describe and analyse them within a framework focusing on multiplicity and hybridity.

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Motion graphics, compositing and montage Motion graphics beyond cinema According to Manovich the term motion graphics refers ‘. . . to all moving image sequences which are dominated by typography and/or design and embedded in larger forms’ (2006b: 9). This definition is problematic because it does not take into consideration that design may not be considered as a material, but more of as a practice. The output of a design process may, however, be referred to as a design. For Goux and Houff (2003: 13), ‘[a]t the core of motion graphic design lies the transition – images and texts changing from one to another over time’. A fuller definition needs to include the concept of compositing that helps place motion graphics as digitally designed. As a mode of visual expression, motion graphics is however not a purely digital phenomenon, as kinetic graphical mediations were designed in the late 1950s and 1960s (Manovich 2006a,b). Contemporary motion graphics is indebted to the designs of Saul Bass, who introduced moving typography in the opening titles of North by Northwest (1959) and later Psycho (1960) directed by Hitchcock (Manovich 2006a). However, compositing has limitations in accounting for motion graphics in websites.

Compositing Compositing is discussed by Manovich (2001, 2006a,b) and Bolter (2006) to account for the multiplicity of moving media forms presented within the same moving sequence as afforded by computer software. For Manovich (2001: 136) compositing ‘. . . refers to the process of combining a number of moving image sequences, and possibly stills, into a single sequence with the help of special compositing software such as After Effects (Adobe), Compositor (Alias Wavefront), or Cineon (Kodak)’. By facilitating the integration of complex multimodal relations within the single frames of a sequence, compositing is central for understanding motion graphics. By including the concept of compositing, I envisage motion graphics as computer generated genre- and media unspecific time-based (audio) visual multimodal expressions, where diverse media types are blended in a single sequence through compositing.

Montage When analysing the textual articulation of coherence between the elements that make up a website, the concept of montage is useful. It allows

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us to examine the multilinearly organised potential in the co-occurrence of various elements such as motion graphics snippets, menus, explanatory written texts, sound, graphic design etc. In order to do this we need to distinguish between different aspects of montage and their origins. Within cinema, montage is an important principle and has been defined as: 1. A synonym for editing. 2. An approach to editing developed by the Soviet film-makers of the 1920s; it emphasizes dynamic, often discontinuous, relationships between shots and the juxtaposition of images to create ideas not present in either one by itself.

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(Bordwell and Thompson 1993: 495)

Montage is best known in reference to 1920s avant-garde and Soviet cinema, in particular as theorised and practiced by Sergei Eisenstein. He developed montage to enable him to ‘. . . manipulate emotional responses through the vibrant process of film editing’ (Rush 1999: 18) by way of joining one shot to the next in a linear sequence from beginning to end. ‘By what, then, is montage characterized and, consequently, its cell – the shot? By collision. By the conflict of two pieces in opposition to each other. By conflict. By collision’ (Eisenstein 1929: 37). Other approaches to montage, however, were less geared towards collision. This was the case in those developed by other Soviet constructivist artists such as Lazló Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Alexandr Rodchenko and several others within photography and graphic design (Hollis 1994, Rush 1999, Heller 2003). Alongside work on filmic montage in the Soviet Union, photography and graphic design were also regarded as mass media for political communication. The architect, designer and artist El Lissitzky, an important developer of photomontage in the 1920s, saw montage as . . . the assembly of different elements that gave life to the to essentially static photograph by juxtaposition or superimposition, combining different viewpoints, cropping, cutting out, and exploiting violent contrasts and changes of angle. (Hollis 1994: 47)

Concerning emergent webtexts, formulations of cinematic and static graphic montage need to be broadened to other art and media forms. In motion graphics portfolios online, we encounter environments that have been spatially and temporally designed through linkages and distinctions that are neither necessarily aligned with the linear sequentiality of playtime in film nor the layered, yet static, constructions of photomontage as media.

Spatial montage It might be argued that web design lies somewhere in between the static photomontages of Lissitzky and the temporal montage found within cinema. A website containing motion graphics may not move if the user does not physically interact with the site. In this instance the motion graphics snippets are paused, as is depicted in the image in Figure 1.

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Figure 1: Tilted screengrab from no-domain.com, showing two different integrated motion graphics projects. Manovich equates spatial montage in film with compositing, referring to the erasure of borders between the various media forms within motion graphics (2001). Within cinema studies, spatial montage has received less attention than temporal montage (Manovich 2001). Spatial montage, however, has been taken up within art cinema and new media, for example by the artist Isaac Julien in his triple video projection work The Long Road to Mazatlàn (1999). In this work, triple projections interrelate imagery of cowboys, cattle and fields with homoerotic motifs, unsettling each rendition as part of an overall story (Frankel 2003). When motion graphics are presented as parts of larger web texts, spatial montage allows us to see how each screen in the site is spatially composed.

Multilinear spatio-temporal montage In web design, spatial montage may also refer to the various elements cooccurring in one window, and to how various windows co-occur on the same screen. Websites are multilinear texts, designed as for being encountered as a variety of stills and sequences over time. Digital media texts are widely compared to cinema (Manovich 2001, Friedberg 2006). At the level of cultural representations, websites have similarities to cinema but perhaps even more differences. Web texts in general have strong temporal aspects, but differ significantly from film for

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cinema and television through their multilinear structures and articulations. As elements of motion graphics are presented within a website, a snippet may have its own linear temporality, much like film and television, but it is also subordinate to the multilinearity of the overall and larger site. There are potentially two levels of spatial montage in websites. These are situated in compositions within a single window as well as in the larger compositions made up by various assemblies of such windows. Movement may be present in both these levels. I refer to the co-presence of these levels as multilinear spatio-temporal montage.

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Multilinear graphical montage Motion graphics texts may also be understood in terms of graphic montage. At a general level, websites are assemblies of multiple, still and linear segments which may be reassembled into various constellations in use over time. Such artefacts are designed to be accessed in different sequences and have been described as hypermedia (Liestøl 1999) in which different media types may be combined. Multilinearity may also be extended to graphical montage. I coin the term multilinear graphical montage to refer to digital montage that aesthetically and graphically relates the various parts of a website to each other through graphical juxtapositions, co-occurrences and contrasts. In terms of communication design this type of montage allows for the potential relating of elements, as one part may be ‘connected’ to another if accessed in a variety of orders. In multilinear graphical montage, each of the nodes is designed to fit into several possible compositions bearing the same elements. As a result, this enables meaning to be created far beyond the sum of the parts.

Analysis Orientation In this print text I include annotated screengrabs. The screengrabs are tilted to remind readers that these are representations of dynamic websites and that they do not convey static images. I encourage readers to open the sites themselves. My analysis proceeds as follows. I briefly analyse the internal coherence in a motion graphics text through application of the concept of compositing. I give a more detailed analysis of how coherence between the motion graphics texts and the overall site composition is articulated and achieved through applying several types of montage. This is done in five sections. The first discusses compositing in a motion graphics advertisement. The second discusses compositing in relation to montage. The third examines into spatial montage in no-domain.com, and the fourth investigates multilinear spatio-temporal montage in psyop.tv. The fifth looks at multilinear graphical montage in praystation.com, no-domain.com and psyop.tv.

Compositing in a Merell advertisement Manovich (2006a:7) claims that motion graphics is central to a new hybrid visual language of moving image where language is not restricted to particular media forms manifested in both narrative and non-narrative

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media expressions. He notes that: ‘Compositing in the 1990s supports a different aesthetic characterized by smoothness and continuity. Elements are now blended together, and boundaries erased rather than emphasized’ (Manovich 2001: 142). When motion graphics texts are tightly integrated in a website, compositing is an important feature for the internal design of these elements. Yet it does not account for what sits outside the composite frames of the singular screen. Compositing becomes one feature among others in a complex montage, but it is not the only feature at play. As a concept, compositing is insufficient alone in accounting for the integration of motion graphics into websites.

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From compositing to montage Montage offers some means of tackling the insufficiency of compositing in textual analysis of motion graphics sites. For example, an advertisement for sneakers by Merrell is graphically part of the website of its designers. The advertisement is displayed as a central and partly autonomous piece of an overall web design and as an element of a wider portfolio (Figure 2). The advertisement could be categorised as ‘content’, but, in a communication design view, the whole website needs to be seen as an entity. Web design may then be understood at several levels. The motion graphics text may be regarded as an independent mediation. Yet, the same text may be regarded as an integral part of the site. At this level, the

Figure 2: Tilted screengrab from www.psyop.tv, showing an advertisement for Merrell sneakers.

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unifying principle of the website, however, is not compositing but montage. Montage allows us to conceptualise coherence in texts that are multilinear where the elements are not necessarily blended smoothly.

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Spatial montage in no-domain Websites by motion graphics designers are made up of multiple combinations of mediational elements. We may regard these as compositions in their own right, including when there is no input from a user. Input from a user, though, may activate compositional change, resulting in a new composition. It is possible to consider each ‘page’ in terms of spatial montage. At the level of singular screen compositions, spatial montage is realised in the spatial distribution of the various elements, and how they contrast with each other. In the screengrab from no-domain.com (Figure 3), we see the juxtaposition of the background splash screen in relation to the other elements, like QuickTime players, and pop-up windows. In Figure 3, the background splash screen (1) is visible behind the other elements, and stays static through encounters with the site, thus providing a framing of the whole composition. On top of this, there is a bigger component, which opens in a pop-up window (2). Here, the left column is a contrast to the overall screen design, both in terms of functionality, colour and texturing, marking this area out as a separate part of the site. It is in this area that most of the navigational features are located, as well as a news section (2 and 4). This section and the splash screen are graphically connected through the identical light green background. Within the same pop-up window, there are nine still images, arranged as a square (6). These stills are taken from the motion graphics snippets selected for display. Three windows with different functions are then assembled into one unit consisting of different elements. These are not seamlessly blended into each other as is done through compositing. Several media types and styles are juxtaposed and placed in relation to each other, but importantly, these are not blended into one smooth sequence. When such spatial montages are multiple and moving, and they change over time and in use, they may be understood through reference to multilinear spatio-temporal montage.

Multilinear spatio-temporal montage The screengrab shown in Figure 4, is taken from www.psyop.tv. The screens throughout the site are organised for flexibility in a semi-fixed schema, so as to allow consequential presentation of projects across the site. The screens that make up the portfolio unit are divided into seven basic sections. Section 1 contains the overall website’s main categories, presented in hand written style. Section 2 consists of the sub-categories. The selectable sub-categories in this website are ironically marked by blue underlining, much as proposed by usability guru Nielsen (2001). Section 3 is made up of categories relating to information about the company as well as a client login area and a section leading to general contact information. Section 3 is made up of a horizontal row of still images. These still images serve as thumbnails, and by clicking on any one of these, the snippet they represent starts to run in a QuickTime player.

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Figure 3: Spatial montage – annotated, tilted screengrab from no-domain.com.

These elements are taken from the motion graphics clips presented in full via QuickTime windows that make up Section 6. This is where the motion graphics snippets are displayed as moving media. These windows are movable to anywhere across the screen, but they open automatically in the same spot every time. The QuickTime window remains open unless actively closed. It is often overlapped by the next motion graphics snippet opened and played as can be seen in section 7. This section is therefore a flexible unit as it allows for several QuickTime player windows to open simultaneously thereby allowing

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Figure 4: Main section in overall design – annotated and tilted screengrab from www.psyop.tv.

potential reorganisation and assembly, as these windows may be moved across the screen space. Section 5 is a graphical field which visually connects the row of still images with the QuickTime window and with the navigational unit of categories. The graphics are placed between these units. They are static graphic elements taken from the motion graphics shown in the QuickTime snippet. These graphics break up the box-like space. The spatial montage in Figure 4 above, positions the QuickTime window as one element of equal importance to the others through its co-existence with the other elements in the screen design. This is in contrast to a

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tendency in web design to graphically separate out video players as visually distinct elements to the rest of the site design. In psyop.tv the static graphical elements drawn from the motion graphics snippets take up as much space as the navigational elements in the other units. The graphical field showing illustrations from the motion graphics snippet is not to be interacted with directly. Still, the area for these snippets is placed centrally in all the screens. It is thus treated as equally important to the other elements in the design. All these elements create a framing or a context for viewing the motion graphics snippet. The visual focus is not placed on the motion graphics snippet alone. The whole integrated screen presentation of a specific project becomes an integral part of the artistic and aesthetic properties of the snippet on display, as well as that of the website. This helps create a coherent media text even as the motion graphics snippets differ from screen to screen. I refer to this as multilinear graphical montage. As a user encounters a portfolio such as this, all the elements change, but the organisation of them is still more or less constant. Different snippets of motion graphics bring with them different still images as well as contextualising graphics. Throughout the whole portfolio section of psyop.tv, written text, still images and motion graphics are combined in spatial montages, which, when encountered by users, transform into yet again different spatial montages. When there is ‘movement in the interface’, that is, when dynamic websites embody moving image, movement takes place at three levels: (1) In a dynamic interface, movement occurs in the interface itself, (2) in the moving images or motion graphics integrated into the website, and, (3) in the movement created as a user interacts with the text (Skjulstad and Morrison 2005). Liestøl (1999) discusses this third dimension in hypermedia, referring to the concept of ‘discourse as discoursed’ in accounting for the readers’ enactment of texts in hypermedia. This also applies to users encountering websites. When complex and dynamic web texts are approached as discourse as discoursed through users’ movement, this may be referred to by what I call multilinear spatio-temporal montage. What occurs here is that the montage changes spatially and temporally as the multilinear structure of the website unfolds in use over time. In the case discussed above, the application of multilinear spatio-temporal montage brings us slightly closer to seeing how such a dynamic gestalt may be understood at the level of articulation of a digital communication design. The graphical still elements placed between the QuickTime window, the row of still images and the navigational unit of categories play a crucial role in integrating motion graphics into the website as a whole, that is as graphical multilinear design. This is taken up further in the section below.

Multilinear graphical montage Websites are more alike the design of a magazine than that of a singular advertisement on a printed page. Heller (2003) refers to the importance of avant-garde magazine design for electronic arts and digital design avantgardes exploring the frontiers of new media. Magazines are bound in page

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order, but they are often browsed instead of read from page to page or from beginning to end. In psyop.tv all the logo-centric text is created in a hand written style that is not typical of much digital design on the web. The skin of the QuickTime player is also hand drawn. In Figure 4 the handcrafted style connects visually with the style of the motion graphics snippet and its corresponding screen graphics and the overall visual style of the site. Such a handcrafted style, both in the overall screen design as well as in the motion graphics snippet, binds all the elements together stylistically through organic line and personal touch. The background of the entire website looks as if it is painted with translucent water-colors on textured paper. The resemblance to aquarelle painting, and hand drawing takes attention away from the box like rows and tables associated with traditional and less aesthetically oriented web design. Through grounding the website in traditional art forms and techniques, the site becomes more a kinetic composition than a pure information space. In psyop.tv, and no-domain.com, graphic design binds together various sections and screens across the site as it unfolds through time in use. Graphic design creates unity and coherence: the users’ movement through the text is the mechanism for going from one part of the site to the next. These parts are mediationally connected to each other via graphic design. Navigational elements in psyop.tv are conveyed via handwritten style more than simple navigational functionality: they are also part of the overall mediation (Skjulstad 2007b). This has implications for our understanding of web interfaces. Through the design of units for potential co-occurrence in montages, graphic design becomes an important vehicle for creating unity and coherence. It is through juxtaposition of sometimes contrasting visual material – still and moving image, as well as navigational menus with categories – that coherence is achieved. These contrasts may be graphically designed, not necessarily for creating smooth graphical univocal mediations, but as contrasts and juxtapositions integral to the mediation. A website may be regarded as a patchwork where the final composition may be unthreaded and rearranged into several differing compositions as the text is realised multilinearly. Graphic design is therefore integral to web mediation far beyond superficial decoration of the site.

Discussion and conclusions Communication design and compositing A communication design approach to web texts helps support inquiry into the micro and macro articulation of emerging features of digitally designed media texts such as motion graphics. Applying and extending concepts of montage allows us to relate elements to larger textual contexts. Conceptualisations of media as hybrid and multiple are useful for rooting practices, styles and techniques in older media forms and media practices, but these alone may have their limits in accounting for emerging, dynamic texts on the web. In carrying out a textual analysis of the multiple, intersecting and yet divergent characteristics and texturing of websites as realised via motion

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graphics, the concept of compositing has been shown to be partly useful. Through compositing, seamless combinations of a variety of diverse expressions and media types become coherent and unified media expressions. Compositing is also a fruitful concept in accounting for web texts as dynamic gestalts, that is, as evincing unity and coherence, over time and also in use. Mediationally, this is achieved within motion graphics snippets on the web. However, when we look to the unifying mechanisms at play in complex websites housing motion graphics, compositing has its limitations. I have suggested that the concept of montage may be applied to counter these limitations in textual analysis of motion graphics in web design.

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Montage at play in web design When Manovich relies on narrow notions of montage as a primarily cinematic technique achieved through dialectical juxtapositions of contrasting footage to create a ‘third meaning’, he loses sight of an important design strategy in contemporary digital design practice. By claiming that new media in general has anti-montage tendencies, Manovich’s attempt to develop a ‘language of new media’ does not account for media texts which transcend the smooth and composite expressions widely available today. Through textual analysis of actual web texts I suggest that Manovich sees only part of the whole picture when claiming that there is no such thing as montage in computer media (Manovich 2001) but merely an aesthetics of smooth composites and morphing. Textual analysis also suggests that computer media are not entirely reducible to one coherent and universal media form. As Manovich’s focus primarily lies on what he refers to as software studies, finding a universal language for new media is possible by delving into the particulars of code and system in computer communication. A communication design oriented approach, however, is geared towards articulation in mediation as a means to address coherence in multiple mediations in websites. Such an approach acknowledges that websites embody code, but this code is rather seen as applied in design. A communication design perspective therefore offer a lens through which we may see how code is mediationally manifested as web expression. These textual manifestations of code make up coherent websites, that is ones montaged into textual unities. Reflecting on a wider view of montage than is often presented, Eisenstein earlier noted that: For us, montage became a means of achieving a unity of a higher order – a means through the montage image of achieving an organic embodiment of a single idea conception, embracing all elements, parts, details of the film work. And thus understood, it seems considerably broader than understanding of narrowly cinematographic montage; thus understood, it carries much to fertilize and enrich our understanding of art methods in general. And in conformity with this principle of our montage, unity and diversity are both sounded as principles (Eisenstein 1944: 255; italics in original).

As the analysis above suggests, montage may serve as a unifying principle at full play in the websites of motion graphics designers. At a textual micro level, inside the motion graphics snippets, the main principle for creating

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coherence is compositing, not montage. But, at a textual macro level of whole websites, it is the montage-like articulations that might be said as to create unity and coherence across assemblies of very diverse media expressions. I have tempted to go a step further and suggest three different kinds of montage at play in motion graphics rich web sites: spatial montage, multilinear spatio-temporal montage and multilinear graphical montage. The terms multilinear spatio-temporal montage and multilinear graphical montage have been generated through textual analysis that accounts for montage that crosses multilinear segments of spatio-temporal design in web mediation. The term multilinear graphical montage is used to highlight the role of graphic design as primarily mediational in the selected web texts. Montage is a rich concept when applied multilinearly because it enables inquiry into texts that move on several levels. In multilinear montage, potential juxtapositions, co-occurrences and contrasts are designed for multiple presentational combinations. Montage in websites thus differs from linear montage as a cinematic technique. The concept of multilinear montage may also help us further understand dynamic mediation in web texts as integral to design for communication. One important finding arising from textual analysis is that through multilinear graphical montage, graphic design becomes an important part of the overall mediation of a site, and not merely superficial embellishment. It is therefore integral to mediation on the web in which communication is the main aim.

Interfaces in digital communication design One important implication of a communication design approach for the analysis of motion graphics in web design is that the concept interface becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from that of mediation. Interrelations between mediation and interfaces are evident in the handwritten and mediatised menus in the psyop.tv site. Such mediatisation is discussed in Skjulstad (2007b). If interaction is increasingly naturalised, that is, if users develop ‘blindness’ to the supporting technologies of the Web and their protocols (see Gietelman 2006), what HCI labels interaction is absorbed into the overall mediational experience of browsing the Web. The attention of a user is therefore not necessarily on the interaction but on the mediation. The concepts of interfaces and mediation are therefore in need of further scrutiny because interfaces are increasingly becoming mediational. In other words, interfaces become dynamic surfaces for mediation on the web. In Lash and Lury’s words, drawing on both McLuhan and Castells, ‘the medium is on the medium’ (2007: 55). This refers to how the medium for communicating online contemporary design practice is not primarily the Web. The online portfolio as a mediational interface might be seen as taking on the role of a medium for communication on the Web medium. In motion graphics designers’ websites the interrelation between interface and content therefore is so dense that the two are hard to distinguish from one another. Manovich (2001: 67), however, sees this as only applying to electronic art, and that it distinguishes art from design. One of the main implications of adopting a communication design perspective on

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motion graphics in web design is that it helps to demonstrate that this merger does not only take place within electronic art. As content and interface blend, the emerging text as a whole may also be conceived of as a mediation of divergent design practices. These morph into complex but coherent texts yet ones that are fluid and themselves still in formation. Acknowledgements

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This text is part of an article-based PhD in Media and Communication, at InterMedia, and part of the Aesthetics at Work project (funded by the Research Council of Norway), at the University of Oslo. My thanks to Andrew Morrison for comments and editing, Gunnar Liestøl, Ragnhild Tronstad, Idunn Sem and Vemund Barstad Bermingrud for comments, and to Anders Hofgaard for work on the graphics.

References Bolter, D. (2003a), ‘Theory and Practice in New Media Studies’, in G. Liestøl, A. Morrison and T. Rasmussen (eds.), Digital Media Revisited: Theoretical and Conceptual Reflections in Digital Domains, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 15–33. Bolter, Jay D. (2003b), ‘Critical Theory and the Challenge of New Media’, in M. Hocks and M. Kendrick (eds.), Eloquent Images, Cambridge: The MIT Press, pp. 19–36. Bolter, D. and Gromala, D. (2003), Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Bolter, D. and Grusin, R. (1999), Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Bolter, D. (2006), The Desire for Transparency in an Era of Hybridity, Leonardo 39:2, pp. 109–111. Bordwell, D. and Thompson, K. (1993), Film Art: an Introduction, 4th edn., New York: McGraw-Hill. Carroll, N. (1985), ‘The Specificity of Media in the Arts’, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 19:4, pp. 5–20. Cloninger, C. (2002), Fresh Styles for Web Designers: Eye Candy from the Underground, Indianapolis: New Riders Publishing. Couldry, N. (2006), ‘Transvaluing Media Studies: Or Beyond the Myth of the Mediated Centre’, in J. Curran and D. Morley (eds.), Media and Cultural Theory, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 177–194. Darley, A. (2000), Visual Digital Culture, London: Routledge. Eisenstein, S. (1949), Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, Orlando: Harcourt. Frankel, D. (2003), ‘Isaac Julien: The Long Road to Mazatlàn’ in J. Shaw and P. Weibel (eds.), The Cinematic Imaginary after Film, Cambridge: The MIT Press, pp. 288–289. Frascara, J. (2004), Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice, Allworth Press: New York. Friedberg, A. (2006), The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Gibbons, J. (2005), Art and Advertising, London: I.B. Tauris. Gitelman, L. (2006), Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture, Cambridge: The MIT Press.

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Goux, M. and Houff, J. (2003), On Screen in Time: Transitions in Motion Graphic Design for Film, Television and New Media, Mies: Rotovision. Heller, S. (2003), Mertz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant-Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century, New York: Phaidon. Hollis, R. (1997), Graphic Design: A Concise History, London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. Jenkins, H. (2006), Convergence Culture, New York: New York University Press. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001), Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication, London: Arnold. Lash, S. and Lury, C. (2007), Global Culture Industry. The Mediation of Things, Cambridge: Polity Press. Landow, G. (1997), Hypertext 2.0, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. Laurel, B. (1993), Computers as Theatre, New York: Addison Wesley, reading.

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Liestøl, G. (1999), Essays in Rhetorics of Hypermedia Design, Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oslo: Oslo. Liestøl, G. (2003), ‘“Gameplay”: From Synthesis to Analysis (And Vice Versa)’, in G. Liestøl, A. Morrison and T. Rasmussen (eds.). Digital Media Revisited: Theoretical and Conceptual Reflections in Digital Domains. Cambridge: The MIT Press, pp. 389–413. Löwgren, J. and Stolterman, E. (2004), Thoughtful Interaction Design: a Design Perspective on Information Technology, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Manovich, L. (2001), The Language of New Media, Cambridge: The MIT Press. ——— (2006 a), ‘After Effects, or Velvet Revolution in Modern Culture Part 1’, http://www.manovich.net/, Unpublished article, Accessed 25 May 2007. ——— (2006b), ‘After Effects, or Velvet Revolution in Modern Culture Part 2’, http://www.manovich.net/, Accessed 25 May 2007. Morrison, A. (2003), ‘From Oracy to Electracies’, in G. Liestøl, A. Morrison and T. Rasmussen (eds.), Digital Media Revisited: Theoretical and Conceptual Reflections in Digital Domains, Cambridge: The MIT Press, pp. 115–154. Nielsen, J. (2000), Designing Web Usability, Indianapolis: New Riders. Oxman, R. (2005), ‘Theory and Design in the First Digital Age’, Design Studies, 27:3, pp. 229–265. Ross, C. (2005), ‘New Media Arts Hybridity: The Vases (Dis)Communicants between Art, Affective Science and AR Technology’, Convergence, 11:4, pp. 32–42. Rush, M. (1999), New Media in Art, London: Thames & Hudson. Skjulstad, S. (forthcoming), ‘Clashing Constructs in Web Design’, in A. Melberg (ed.), Aesthetics at Work, Oslo: Unipub. ——— (forthcoming), ‘What are These? Designers’ Web Sites as Communication Design’, in A. Morrison (ed.), Inside Multimodal Composition, Cresskill: Hampton Press. Skjulstad, S. and Morrison, A. (2005), ‘Movement in the Interface’, Computers and Composition, 22:4, pp. 413–433. Wakeford, N. (2000), ‘New Media, New Methodologies: Studying the Web’, in D. Gauntlett (ed.), Web Studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age, New York: Arnold, pp. 31–41.

Suggested citation Skjulstad, S. (2007), ‘Communication design and motion graphics on the Web’, Journal of Media Practice 8: 3, pp. 359–378, doi: 10.1386/jmpr.8.3.359/1

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Contributor details Synne Skjulstad is currently working as a research fellow at InterMedia, University of Oslo, Norway. This article is part of an article-based Ph.D. on Communication Design as a perspective on mediation in contemporary experimental persuasive web design. She has previously worked with co-designing and co-implementing an interactive documentary film, ‘Hyperactive’ (2001), and the installation ‘UnrestRoom’ (2003). She has also worked in practice-based research projects on digital media in choreography and dance. The related multilevel BallectroWeb was developed (www.intermedia.uio.no/ballectro/). Recent publications include: Skjulstad, S. and Morrison, A. (2005), ‘Movement in the interface’, Computers and Composition, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 413–433. (The article received ‘The Ellen Nold Best Article Award 2006’ from the journal Computers and Composition). Skjulstad, S. (2007), ‘Designers websites as communication design’, in Morrison, A. (ed.), Inside Multimodal Composition, Hampton Press: Cresskill. Skjulstad, S. (2007), ‘Clashing Constructs in Web Design’, in Melberg, A. (ed.), Aesthetics At Work, Unipub: Oslo. Morrison, A. & Skjulstad, S. (2007), ‘Unreal Estate: Digital Design and Mediation in Marketing Urban Residency’, in Wagner, I. & Stuedahl, D. (eds.), Exploring Digital Design, Springer: Vienna. Contact: Synne Skjulstad, InterMedia, University of Oslo, Research Fellow, InterMedia, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1161 Blindern, NO-0318 Oslo, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]

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