Designing for the web and for designing for print are essentially two very distinct types of design. However, a designer can design for both web and print.
Khoi Vinh, design director of nytimes.com, wrote an article on how print designers can adapt to web designs, ‘This Way to the Web, Print Designers!’ Khoi Vinh emphasised on the difference between web and print design. Equipped with the rights tools and approach, a print designer can easily adapt to designing for the online environment.
Designers need to realise print and online are two different genres. Genre refers to types of texts deployed for specific purposes in specific contexts (Schirato & Yell 1996, p.119). Texts are written differently for both print and online. Online texts are generally shorter than print-based texts.
For example, in print-based texts, its affordance lies in its ability to ‘tell’. Hence, texts are written in a more narrative way (Walsh 2006). Meanwhile, web readers do not read every single word but they only seek the information they need. Online texts need to be short and concise and provide readers with the exact information they need (Reep 2006).
Another reason would be it is more difficult to read online than reading from paper (Parker 2003, p.270). Onscreen reader’s eyes suffer from fatigue easily due to the projected light from the screen, resulting in them spending less time reading.
“The fact that I’m repeating that the Web is not like the printed page, that online information consumption is fundamentally different from print. On the Web, design is not a method for implementing narrative, as it is in print, but rather it’s a method for making behaviours possible,” Vinh said.
Making behaviours possible refers to the interactivity feature of websites. Websites are considered as multimodal texts (Walsh 2006) while print texts are monomodal (text only).
Other elements in addition to the text such as videos and hyperlinks encourage the readers to interact with websites.
References:
Parker, RC 2003, Looking good in print, 5th edn, Paraglyph Press,
Schirato, T & Yell, S 1996, Framing context, St. Leonards, NSW.
Vinh, K 2007, This way to the web, print designers!,
Subtraction.com, viewed 28 October 2007, <http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2007/0816_this_way_to_.php>
Walsh, M 2006, ‘“Textual shift”: examining the reading process
with print, visual and multimodal texts’,
Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 24-37.
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