The Era of the Blog Part 3 - Print Design versus Online Design

Design has purpose. Different purposes lead to different designs. So how is designing for the Internet different from designing for print?

Both traditional print content and online web content are portrayed through layout design. According to Kress & van Leeuwen (p. 4, 1998), the elements of a layout attract the readers attention to different degrees, and through a wide variety of means such as placement in the foreground or background, relative size, contrast in tonal value or colour, and differences in sharpness to name a few.

An article in a newspaper or a magazine, with its elements such as header and supporting images, need to be arranged to establish a reading path so the reader knows what content to analyse first. Kress & van Leeuwen (p. 5, 1998) state that connective devices portrayed through design elements have the effect of expressing that the content thus connected is to be read as belonging together in some sense, as continuuous or complimentary.

A scan of an article from Handmade magazine. The article is divided in four columns, guiding the readers to scan the article in a reading path with ease.
Source: Flickr.

However, on a website, the navigation menu (regardless of where it sits on the page) is the tool that leads the reader to what content he or she intends to read. Walsh (p. 9, 2006) states that unlike a continuuous narrative, there is no beginning or end to the content of a website. The reader chooses his or her own pathway by clicking on menu and navigation buttons as well as hyperlinks.

Screenshot of a website I regularly visit, Avatarspirit.net. Take note of the various columns and placement of content, such as external links and navigation menus.

Designing for print also means dealing with physical traits of the media, like the texture and the weight of the paper that can be used to achieve the designer's publication goals (Miller,2008). For example, glossy paper or art card can be used for posters or brochures to attract reader's attentions.

A designer has many interactive and multimedia features at his disposal when designing for the web, such as video and audio embedding and polls. These capabilities are an advantage to web design as opposed to print design as the lack of technological enhancement does not allow for the use all these features on print.

The way content is written on print and the web differ from each other as well. Books and newspapers tend to contain long bodies of text with sometimes more than enough information than needed. Website contents, like blogs and online news pages on the other hand usually condense the content and post straightforward information without much excess information.

References:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T (1998) Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout,
Approaches to Media Disclosure Blackwell.

Walsh, M 2006, The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts 'Reading visual and multimodal texts: how is reading different? Vol 29, No.1, pp. 24-37 Australian Journal of Language and Literacy

Miller, E 2008, Designing for print vs The Web, About.com viewed 9 November 2008 <http://graphicdesign.about.com/od/printvsweb/a/print_vs_web.htm>

2008, AvatarSpirit.net, viewed 9 November 2008
<http://www.avatarspiritmedia.net/>

2008, Handmade magazine, Flickr, viewed 9 November 2008
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/girl-of-fall/2946604950/>