INSTITUTIONS
When a large group of people share
a certain interest or activity, or consider it to be necessary for the
benefit of all, a framework is organized to bring together the interested
individuals and those who can provide the demanded activity. The framework
is called 'Institution'. The activities can be manifold. Parliament is
an institution, and the local art centre is an institution. They all share
the task of informing a broad interested public of what they are doing
- that's what they were made for in the first place; their raison d'être
is their public base.
This high priority of informing their
audiences reflects on the communication policy of institutions: they use
any means necessary. So it is not surprising that institutions, especially
educational and cultural institutions, were among the first extensive users
of the World Wide Web. There are not many universities or museums or government
institutions who by now do not have their own Website.
The possibilities of on-line media
for communicating an institution's activities are great, considering the
types and categories of information that an institution can provide to
the public: policy statements, programs, events calendars, archives, data
bases, search services, information on participants or staff, faq's, admission
information, related activities, feedback possibilities (e-mail, 'chat
with like minds!', newsgroups, mailing lists). A well developed institutional
site provides all of these informational entrances. Which puts a lot of
responsibility on the graphic design of the interfaces for these sites.
The visitor has to be led step by step through a complex maze of interconnected
data. And the data have to be organized in ways that make them accessible
from a lot of different angles.
So in the design for institutional
Websites, structure is paramount. These sites are probably the most frame-intensive
sites around, and more often than not, they are heavy in default text and
lean in images - information comes before entertainment. The most conspicuous
elements in these designs are the pictograms and buttons that structure
the navigation. Sometimes these are simply hotwords, grouped in frames
or on differently colored backgrounds, sometimes they are elaborate images
that visually organize the complex structure behind them. And often there
will be a clickable ground plan of the institution's building, with the
endless corridors that characterize them as the bureaucratic organizations
that they are. But in most cases there is a choice of interfaces and navigational
tools, text or image based, to make the institution a truly open space;
Despite its bureaucratic structure, a well designed institution is a tool
in the hands of the public. |