Here's a site that says very little in words, but conveys a great deal in images. Yet it is not Flash-laden or loud in any way. Instead, it speaks in whispers, carrying this home page's message -- "a culture in papermaking since 1829."

I had never heard of Gmund, which has been hand-making paper in the Bavarian town of Gmund since the days when Goethe dipped his quill. This is not surprising. Gmund's market is small -- high-end designers and printers who appreciate and can afford a premium product. It is about as vertical as a market can get.

But the Web gives Gmund an opportunity to make itself both more prominent in its own market and better known outside its traditional circles. Such expansion precipitates a quiet clash of cultures. On the one hand, there is the old-world craftsmanship represented by the Gmund crest and the paper itself, while on the other hand there is the new-world technology that is Gmund.com and its online shop.

None of this is stated, but it is inherent in the design of the tidy little package that is Gmund's home page (shown below). The crest with the old logo is near the middle of the page set against a black band. The almost stark, black-and-white images of the old world are set against a nearly neutral-colored background. But there is also a quiet, animated GIF with Gmund's slogan fading in and out in German, English, and French. And in the upper-left-hand corner, the place where logos go, is the freshly-minted Gmund.com label. Moving the pointer over the navigation elements turns them a shade of orange that is nearly bright. There's creative tension here.

The site brand, Gmund.com, anchors the navigational element, an understated box that nearly hides the intricate workings of this site. This rectangle, along with all the images on this page, is positioned using the HTML <DIV> tag. This creates layers -- sometimes called floating boxes -- that can be precisely positioned using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). There are no tables used for this page. In the case of the navigation box, its <DIV> and CSS combination allows it to fit snugly into the upper-left corner of the window. Thus it avoids the uncertain placement caused by the dreaded browser offset gap, which is the Web equivalent of bad trapping.

More layers are evident in the layout of the small photographs. Notice how they overlap in several places. It would have been easy to arrange these as a montage in a program like Adobe ImageReady and slice them up into non-overlapping rectangles. But this would have been an inelegant solution. From a practical point-of-view, it's easier to slice than to fool around with <DIV> tags. But this would have meant that changing any single picture would have required reslicing the entire montage. With CSS positioning, these images are perfectly placed, yet not set in concrete.

But it is the implementation of rollovers on this page that really necessitated the use of precise positioning. The rollovers work two ways. Roll over any of the images or any of the buttons in the navigation box. This activates replacements for both images. The button text is highlighted in orange, while the images are highlighted with an orange outline and additional boxes of text. For instance, the Mill Tour link invites you to "click to tour." Notice how the orange frame is under the "Shop" image? It's more evidence of layers at work.

Click on Mill Tour to take Gmund up on its virtual "Walk through our mill." The screen that appears (see below) uses all the same page elements: the navigation box, the muted background colors (which happen to match some of Gmund's paper colors), the Gmund logo (here without the crest), and the array of images. There's no fancy animated tour here. You must guide yourself through by pointing to each image to see what pops up. These rollovers don't actually link to anything. They are an end in themselves. You've got to admire the old farmhouse that is Gmund's headquarters and the ancient papermaking equipment. It really makes you want to see what the paper is like.

The Paper Store has more of the same. The background colors are a little different, the Gmund crest replaces the logo, and each line of paper is given a brand. Roll over the brand identity and there's a brief description of each paper, including one made of old beer labels and another from cigar wrappers. There is something very appetizing about each of these brands, and if this were a food site it would make me feel quite hungry.

It is remarkable how much variation there is in the papers themselves and in the way they are identified for branding purposes. Yet Gmund is able to feature them all with a distinctly consistent treatment. The brand logos are such a tour de force of labelling styles that you'd think they would compete for attention. Instead, the straightforward, unassuming presentation makes them all seem quite desirable.

Every line of paper has a complete specifications page, such as the one shown below: A new window opens showing colors, descriptions, weights, and sizes. These windows include the Gmund navigation and also allow you to order paper samples. When you click on one of these links, the specifications window is closed and you're returned to the main window.

You cannot actually order paper from the site. You have to go through one of the distributors to do this. But Gmund.com sells swatchbooks, specification tools, and a line of carefully selected "Cool Gadgets." I like the fact that there's actually a textual explanation of the selection and ordering sequence for this shop. You do not have to be an experienced user to navigate with ease.

This is the only area of the site with any hierarchical depth to it. This site does not need as much depth, because so much information is packed into each page. But the Shop is different. In a way, it is the personification of the new Gmund, gmund.com.

Functionally, the shop page is similar to all the others in this site. Products are listed as layered rollovers. Point to an item to highlight, then click to pop up an image. With this scheme, there's no need to load a new page. All the images load right into the same space. It is nearly as efficient as a Flash animation, but without the need for the Flash plug-in.

Simply click the Order Now button to add an item to your shopping bag. There's no need for Continue Shopping or Check Out buttons, because all of this functionality is built into the single, multi-layered page. Gmund has streamlined the shopping process nicely.

What's important here is the overriding elegance of the layout, the attractive presentation of the items, which makes everything look special. The descriptions are straightforward and succinct. If you were actually ordering something here, you would know what you were getting, and you would know, without ever having touched a sheet of Gmund's paper, that it is all of the highest quality. In Europe in the early 1800s, good taste was considered the epitome of fashion. This site is all about the projection of good taste without the need to proclaim it loudly.

Read more by Clay P. Andres.