The marketing teams were having a discussion the other day about including graphic heros at the top of documents; i.e. data sheets, specification sheets, etc... These graphics were often times in no way related to what the document was about. They were just pretty pictures of pretty people sitting around a computer screen.
This discussion reminded of an article by Gerry McGovern in which he talked about the use of graphics in this gratuitous way.
For me it comes back to understanding what the customer wants and what their mission is when deciding about the look and feel of the document. If I am a customer who is interested in the size, shape and performance of a product I probably don't want to download documents or look at web pages with large graphics at the top of each page. I will most likely do a search within the document for the spec I need and then move on. In other words, focus on the content. Headlines are more important than a gratuitous graphic on a page or doc. Headlines grab a visitors attention, focus them in on the topic and start the visitor reading and solving their problem.
What experiences have you had where content takes a back seat to graphics?
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