Tunnel Vision

The seduction is Marilyn. Click on any colorized version of her to enter the site. You're enticed. You want more, so you go in a little further. You're entertained from the start. The site is David Siegel's.

You've just entered the "tunnel," one of the first tenets of the gospel of web design according to the opinionated Web Designer. The opening should be elegantly simple, drawing visitors inside where the world opens up and choices abound. Don't make them wait while your graphics load and overwhelm them with choices. And always give them an out. People who know where to exit are less likely to leave, he claims. Send them out through another tunnel, with related links and other goodies you saved to the end.

Some say Siegel violates such arguments with his own site (www.dsiegel.com ), where the multiplicity of choices can be confusing for a first time visitor. Other critics object to the tunnel notion altogether, arguing that busy people don't want to have to wander around in a tunnel, especially after the first visit. Just give them information, as simply and quickly as possible.

Siegel would say that the Web experience is also about ambiance, entertainment, elegance of design. Being there is not just about information, it's an experience.

Design is important to David Siegel. He rails about it endlessly on his own site, where you will find a profusion of his treatises on the subject, like Severe Tire Damage , Web Wonk, andBalkanization of the Web,. as well his take on womens rights, Frank Lloyd Wright, and extensive autobiographical information. He's got an amusing take on himself and enjoys sharing his perceptions. Dave's Journal, fresh every Thursday is a promise to the visitor that the site is updated at least once a week. But as a constant visitor, you'll find indications that he's there far more than that. Dining With Dave is a current collection of restaurant adventures, his own rendition of restaurant reviews, both fanciful and informative.

Born in Salt Lake City 38 years ago, Siegel is clever, witty and arrogant. "The master of all trades and the jack of none", is how he describes himself. Wit and wisdom can be found all over his site, which won 2nd place in the 1995 Cool Site of the Year competition. Chosen as one of the top 100 multimedia producers of 1995 by Multimedia Producer Magazine , Siegel has become synonymous with the phrase, "third generation web site," a phrase that he coined himself to describe a site where design issues are paramount. He thinks a site should use metaphors and well-known models of consumer psychology. In his words - "turning a site from a menu into a meal."

His book Creating Killer Web Sites, published by Hayden Press, is a best seller. Some view it as a veritable bible of web site design. A graphic rich book devoted to his unique concepts of design, it's a "why-to" as well as "how-to" full of concise guides to html and the elements of web construction. He's dogmatic, if not obsessed, about the correct use of line spacing and precise placement of images. His technique is exemplified by his use of the invisible gif, an invisible space holder around which you build as much hspace and vspace as necessary to achieve precise layout effects. He is now also a champion of invisible tables as a layout tool.

Siegel views paragraph indents as separators, and insists that indenting the paragraph of a section is a big mistake, as he says in Creating Killer Websites. "When you see the first paragraph of a section indented, as they do at the New York Times , you know they are too busy to bother with details like legibility and reader comfort. Indents are a signal. They don't signal the beginning of a new paragraph; they signal the transition between related paragraphs because nothing else does the job as well."

No bullets or line rules, and he never uses <ul> for paragraph indents. Instead he uses the invisible gif, something else he is known for. With steadfast precision he systematically inserts an invisible gif every few words of every line of text. The result is precise leading, the kind that is currently impossible on the web any other way. Siegel isn't satisfied with approximation. To achieve an effect, he'll painstakingly insert those little invisible gifs by hand wherever necessary to end up with the look that he wants.

The book and companion Web site www.killersites.com are full of functional tips, tricks, and step-by-step instruction on such goodies as color palettes, tables, and type.

A third Web site, www.verso.com, promotes Siegel's San Francisco based Web design company Studio Verso, which has an impressive list of clients including Hewlett Packard, Klutz Press, Sony, and photojournalist Doug Menuez.

The Verso "tunnel" begins with a simple title and single image. over a deep blue background. Click once and you get to the page with your options, all positioned in a vertical ribbon alongside a hazy image of a figure, presumably male, standing alone in a room. The image looks somewhat like a reflection in a car headlight. Intriguing, just enough to make you wonder what's up, to keep going to find out.

Information is easy to access.. Just click on one of the six options. Not all the images are equally interesting. It's almost as if, in an attempt to please a too diversified audience of potential clients, he sometimes ends up lost in thin vaguery. But the People profiles are fun.

Aside from being an award winning web-site designer and html stunt man, Siegel loves to ski and (naturally) professes to be a killer ski instructor. In earlier days he says, he hitchhiked all over Europe with the help of a babyfood jar of sourdough starter, which he used to lure people into letting him stay overnight - making lots of pancake breakfasts for people he'd never met before. So taken is he with Switzerland, incidentally, that he makes a promise right on his web site to create for you "the coolest web site you've ever seen" if you can introduce him to a nice Swiss (or French or German) woman who ends up being his wife. (He's currently not married and claims to be very sensitive to women's issues).

Siegel is also a type designer who has worked with Hermann Zapf - yes that weird name you see on your computer screen when you use the scroll down menu list of fonts. They are currently working together on a new series of script typefaces scheduled to be on the market "in a year or so." Siegel's fonts include the popular Tekton, which is used in MacDonalds commercials.

He has also written seven screenplays, but claims he hasn't yet tried to sell one, because he's still just "learning" screen writing. This refreshing burst of humility is offset by his cockiness in putting forth a new screen writing paradigm he's openly pitting against Syd Field's well established three-act version. Siegel claims his own "Nine-Act Structure" is more advanced than Field's, and should be used screenwriters. and game developers alike.

He is currently looking for a collaborator to work on a screenplay with him. Qualifications: "You must be willing to write ruthlessly commercial scripts." The action takes place in Tibet, and he claims he's running out of time.

Interesting that for a man whose vision of the perfect web site so resembles film, he never uses that metaphor. He talks about the tunnel that brings you into a well designed site, the ultimate importance of design and entertainment, capturing the audience with visual magic, and ambiance. All elements of suspended belief, all elements of film.

The metaphor he uses in his book is a restaurant. "You hear about a restaurant from an advertisement or a friend, or discover it while passing by." You check it out from the outside, read the menu that's posted, inhale the aromas from the kitchen, take note of the general vibe and tempo. Once inside, you can still change your mind and leave. The door is right behind you.

When the food arrives, if the presentation is pleasing to the eye - that's already a step in the right direction. If the food tastes good, then you're even happier. And if the ambiance is right, things are really going well. "Later, when you are hungry again, you return or you don't, based on the quality of that first experience." Siegel believes that your web site "meal" is just like that. The whole idea is to get you to enjoy that first meal so much that you'll come back again - and maybe even bring someone else with you.