Screengrab of riginal design by P+K conceived in Quark XPress

Made on a Mac, but Seen on a PC...

One of the great things about the web today is that now an individual or organization can quickly prototype a site, and the cost-of-entry is low, compared to the millions corporations wasted only a few years ago.

The awful thing though, for many designers, is our perceived 'loss of control' regarding the finished product.

Our goal here is to embrace the web's constraints rather than fight them, to accept that the great majority views the web on a PC, whether we designers like it or not.

Here's an example (right) of what really happens to the Helvetica font that looks so nice in a page layout program on a Mac.

Site design by P+K

Site built by Tricia McGillis, www.mcgillis.com

[Tricia's wallpaper, showing various standard screen resolutions]

Type comparisons - from Quark and Safari on Macs, to Firefox and Explorer on PCs:

[Screengrab of Helvetica in Quark]

Original design in Quark
(Helvetica)

[Screengrab of Arial in Safari 3 for Macintosh]

Safari on a Mac (Arial)
Most control of typographic details,
but only 2% or less of web traffic

[Screengrab of Arial in Firefox and Internet Explorer for PC]

Firefox and Explorer for PC (Arial)
Least control of typography,
but 92% or more of all web traffic