Explosive
Design
Alternatives to
cascading content disclosures
by Joseph J
News
dissemination has a way of presenting itself.
Media students will tell
you it is called an inverted pyramid. It has an header which makes a
broad disclosure. As you dig deeper one can learn the deeper
constructs of the story. This is how classic print news disclosed
content.
It had to have an header
owing to the ergonomic aspect of the newsprint handling. While the
nature and seriousness of content has undergone sea changes, the
inverted pyramid in all irrelevance is being followed in digital
space. We are made to religiously look up at the header for the most
important disclosure in the content. Its customary in standard
websites to see navigation right under these headers, or on the left.
In current digital space we hardly ever use the inverted pyramid
method by any account. It is instead a self styled click-o-maniac
dispersion of content. Which is very useful for horizontal
inoculation of content. Incidentally disabling links on content
leads to a more focused learning.
At any given time the
central object of any presentable matter should be the most important
element present in it. Inversely the least prominent elements
should explode away from the given structure. This is the basis of
explosive Design. This goes away from the accepted notion of
putting important information in pockets such as a header, Sub
header, navigation and information sections.
How is this possible?
Content Information conventionally has been disseminated on a linear
ground where information flows from point A to B to C progressively
or otherwise. Interactive media is non linear yet we keep the struts
of this object cascade downwards. It is quiet revealing to realize
why conventional media did this. Essentially to enable a ergonomic
trajectory owing to its large format.
A book normally begins on
the top and recedes downwards. Interactive material chooses to do the
same in many ways but allows the freedom to navigate in non linear
micro loops.
Newer forms of media with
its inherently imploded universe can find other alternatives. I will
try and illustrate in the following paragraphs why we need to look at
Explosive Design as an alternative.
Our universe began with an
explosion it did not cascade down from a vertical space. Using the
same pursuit we can establish that a point of origin precedes all
matter, which need not be at the top or over any peripherals. I am
proposing a design that centralises the origin of content. Most
cultures use languages whose point of origin is the top left hand
corner . A designer can visually alter that point of origin by
moving in the starting sentence a few inches to the right and giving
a Drop cap to typography.
