Alex Hardy

Three articles from A List Apart on an often neglected aspect of communication on the web – the tone and words that you use. We could all benefit from learning how to be better writers because of one simple, rather unsexy truth:

All the Search Engine Optimisation in the world is futile if you’ve got nothing to say.

No one wants to read claims of market leadership in leveraging viral deliverables. They want to know what you can do for them, in the most straightforward way.

The articles:

Better Writing Through Design

How is it that the very foundation of the web, written text, has taken a strategic back seat to design? Bronwyn Jones argues that great web design is not possible without the design of words…

Reviving Anorexic Web Writing

Intelligent web content is the literature of our time. Amber Simmons argues that conventional approaches have starved the life out of web writing…

Attack of the Zombie Copy

The zombification progresses so gradually that you don’t realize it’s happening until your “About Us” page begins to smell bad and tries to bite your face…

In a riveting bit of non-news, Apple and Microsoft have extended their deal which allows Apple to supply core Windows fonts (such as Times New Roman, Arial and Verdana) with Mac OS X. In a joint statement the two companies said:

Apple customers, developers and web designers can safely specify fonts knowing that their documents, presentations and web pages will appear as they are meant to be seen on screen and in print.

While this is obviously good news (ie: any other decision would be unthinkable), I can’t help but feel like an opportunity has been missed. With Windows Vista only just released, and Mac OS X Leopard almost here, is consistency through mediocrity the best we can expect in the year 2007?

Must we resort to CSS image replacement or sIFR to create a simple heading?

Granted, Verdana is OK (at small sizes) and Georgia is nice too. Arial however is a sorry substitute for Helvetica and in widespread use simply because it was cheaper. Instead of a handful of “web safe” fonts, why don’t we have hundreds? Surely billion dollar corporations can take a font licensing fee on the chin to elevate design across the web? Helvetica, Gill Sans and Futura would be a good start…

While we’re dreaming of changes let’s ban Comic Sans

When I finished watching the trailer for Resident Evil 5 (rumoured to be set in Haiti) I thought two things:

1. That game looks stunning. After the brilliance of Resident Evil 4, that looks worth buying a new console for…
2. Despite:
   * The pre-existence of Chris Redfield…
   * The previous games were set elsewhere, with mostly white zombies…
   * If it is indeed set in Haiti, home of voodoo, then that would make perfect sense and bring an interesting new twist on the series…
   * Capcom are Japanese, a country with its own cultural attitudes…
   * The plot is unknown: Redfield’s mission is surely to save the local people from whatever is possessing them and he may well have black allies…
   * RE5 is rated for adults. If you allow your child to play it you only have your own neglect to blame…

How long until some fool betrays their own innate racism by screaming:

Evil Racist Videogame Urges Us To Shoot Black People Shocker! Won’t Somebody Think Of The Children?!?

It’s taken even less time than I thought it would.

The only racism here is in the eye of the beholder. I see zombies, not black people to “fear, hate and destroy”. At worst, Capcom have been unwise to design a game which was bound to draw that reaction from certain quarters. But are Capcom responsible for people’s reactions, or themselves?