The Next Wave of Format

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•Introduction

•The nature of formats

•How new formats come to be

•The state of creative formats on the web today

•The next wave of format

   Formats for coherence

   Formats for diversity

   Formats for navigation

   Formats for flux

   Formats for ubiquity

   Formats for identifying origins

•Conclusion

How new formats came to be

In this age of ubiquitous software, it’s not always easy to distinguish technological design from format design. In the industrial era of, say, 1880 (when the modern magazine was developed), a technological task, like building a rotary printing press, was clearly distinct from a format design task like choosing the font sizes for a newspaper's headline. Today, coding a web server operating system and setting the color of a web page background both involve programming, so the distinction between them is subtler; but it is still extremely significant. In the end, format design has more influence than coding design over the way people actually use online media.

I first saw this as an avid user, critic and user consultant for computer conferencing systems during the 1980s. These online meeting grounds and virtual communities -- where avant-garde geek-cognoscenti logged in with 2400-baud modems to read each others' typed text -- all maintained very different software structures. Some, like the influential EIES network and the CompuServe Forums, made all comments follow in sequence. Others, like the Source's Participate system, let new conversations branch off at will, creating a thicket-like bramble of ideas and thoughts.. And still others, like the University of Michigan's CONFER system (the forerunner of the WELL's design) used an "inquiry-and-response" design to allow people to start new topics easily but maintain a conversational flow.

At the time, it was fashionable to believe that the quality and timbre of conversation depended on the user interface and software architecture of the conferencing system. But in retrospect, the software design features were almost unimportant. All the software packages came to resemble each other, anyway. The most significant features were formats: Conventions like the "you own your own words" policy on the Well, the practice of archiving threads of conversation on UseNet and CompuServe, the simulation of emotions through "emoticons" and acronyms, and the formal recognition of "hosting" as a critical role for every online conversation.

These features may have been designed, but not in the way that technological features are designed. They were put forth by creative individuals, often with a minimum of expense, and then they moved, with meme-like ease, through the networks of users and creators that comprised the online environment at that time. A few people, like Stewart Brand on the WELL, played the role of format godfather, in the same way that Adolph Zukor and Irving Thalberg played that role in the early-20th-century movie industry, or that Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst played that role for newspapers. They established successful media, making highly skilled use of formats, in a way that audiences responded to and others couldn't help but copy.

Technological design requires a project, a budget, and a deliverable. Formats are forged in the moment of creative necessity, and then they spread as the audience grows accustomed to them. Someone may invent a format (like the picture caption or the email digest), but it rapidly spreads and shifts as other people adapt it. No one has to be trained to use it; indeed, the most compelling, long-lasting formats are self-evident. In a business which depends upon format design to attract its audience -- a media or retail business, for example -- the leader is the person who recognizes the mix of formats that will not just attract people, but compel them to keep returning. A format leader is someone -- a newspaper publisher, web page producer, or TV programmer -- who recognizes a viable format, installs it, and makes it so self-evident and clear that others can't help but copy and use it as well, until it evolves into an industry standard that audiences expect to see again and again.

Thus, for example, the magazine format we know today as "slick magazine style" had its start in sentimental fiction magazines, like Munsey's and McClure's. These were first possible in the 1880s, when the invention of the rotary press allowed print runs of more than a few thousand copies at a time, thus creating the first mass audiences. But the mass market magazine medium also had publisher/editors like S.S. McClure and Frank Munsey, who experimented avidly with new formats for putting text and images on a page together, often stealing ideas and designs from each other. Other magazine editors (Time's Britton Hadden, Fortune's Henry Luce, Vogue's Alexander Lieberman, and so on) continued to experiment. It took about 50 years for the slick magazine format to evolve to the point where most experimenters of today, such as the creators of InStyle and Oprah, tend to wring only minor changes in it.(3) (When a magazine like Wired or Fast Company breaks from the conventions of magazine format, that makes as bold a statement as any of the editorial copy in the magazine.)

3. For more about the evolution of formats in print, see "A History of Magazines on a Timeline," by Art Kleiner (CoEvolution Quarterly, Spring 1979), available online at http://www.well.com/user/art/maghist01.html

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