Dear Gunnar,

I've just reviewed McGovern's new book for Design research news.
Review appears below.

I will read the note to which you posted the URL and respond soon.

Happy New Year!

Ken



>Ken,
>
>You've promoted Gerry McGovern's writing here in the past. I'm
>curious what you think of his recent declarations condemning "graphic
>design principles."
>http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2001/nt_2001_12_17_design.htm
>
>Is he painfully inarticulate or unable to make distinctions, unaware
>of any but the narrowest image of graphic design and graphic
>designers, or opportunistically attacking design for the promotion of
>his planning business?
>
>Gunnar


Review about to appear in DRN:


* McGovern, Gerry and Rob Norton. 2001. Content Critical. Gaining
Competitive Advantage through High-Quality Web Content. London:
Financial Times Prentice Hall.

The World Wide Web is the world's largest publishing medium, and one
of the most important. It is a news source, reference tool, sales
venue, meeting point, marketplace, exchange, and entertainment
center. It is also an information point and service center. The Web
connects millions of organizations to many kinds of clients,
customers, members, and publics. The Web is one of the great tools of
the information society. It is also our greatest source of
information overload.

Web problems commonly develop because individuals and organizations
fail to recognize that using the Web to aggregate and distribute
information is publishing. Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton have written
this useful book to help those who write, edit, or design Web content
to publish effectively.

Effective Web publishing involves getting the right content to the
right person at the right time. In this useful, well written book,
McGovern and Norton explain how to do it.

Content Critical book is a how-to-do-it manual. Written in direct,
clear language, the book offers systematic explanation for dozens of
useful techniques and principles. It is also a primer in the theory
of Web publishing. It explains why the techniques and principles
work. It encourages readers to develop a useful philosophy and theory
of web design.

Most web sites do not work well and many do not work at all. McGovern
and Norton attribute this to the lack of common publishing standards
on the Web, where the libertarian attitude toward freedom of content
is mistakenly confused with failure to consider legibility, ease of
use, and ease of navigation. According to McGovern and Norton, this
confusion is made worse by designers who mistake the web for an
extension of MTV and programmers who see the Web as a playground for
new technologies.

The solution this book offers is a five-stage publishing strategy
with usable checklists and serious conceptual tools for analyzing the
situation, defining publishing scope, designing information
architecture, building a publishing team, and designing appropriate
technology.

This book is highly recommended. It belongs in every design library.
It should be on the reading list of every course in Web design. Any
Web designer who plans to be in business five years from now should
read this book. KF

Web sites:

www.gerrymcgovern.com

http://www.business-minds.com/