[thelist] .gif text

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Fri Jul 7 00:02:34 CDT 2000


geez, i take one day in 2 years to go ride roller coasters, and y'all keep going without me...

it's been answered, but lemme offer some real-world input....

http://womantowomanvideos.org/

the logo (which is primarily a type treatment) won a few awards... as did their brochures and 
such... given that, their highest priority was maintaining the identity that had won awards and 
recognition in the community... while working with the design firm that put the identity together 
(good group of folks), there were a number of places where it became clear that .gif text 
would exist (outside of the obvious use in the nav)...

i didn't want the site to be penalized by search engines, or to be inaccessible to users without 
images, or on slow connections, or even the occasional visually-impaired user...

given that, you'll notice that the home page opening .gif text has the full text as an 'alt' 
attribute... the rest of the content is plain text, but as you go through the site, you'll see quotes 
in the left... those quotes also had to be in their font... as a result, more alt attributes... but i 
didn't "alt" the name in that image, i used it in the photo below, instead, so that it would make 
sense to a screen reader as well...

so, keeping in mind your users, you can pull it off with minimal fuss... assuming you think i 
pulled it off there... if not, well, nevermind...

btw, don't expect a user to d/l a font just to see your site... i am not aware of anybody ever 
having any success with that...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peggy Daniels
> 
> Is it ever ok to have .gif text?
> 
> For example, I'm thinking of logos that are 
> mostly or only text, and have to 
> display in a particular font because the words 
> are the whole logo (with the 
> obligatory swoosh, of course).  Or, maybe a





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