Print Media Vs New Media

Designing for print and designing for a web is as different as the sky and earth. However, designers have this problem of mixing up both the design rules and eventually end up designing something which is unattractive and considered bad design. This often happens to web designers.

Considerations of design for a printed piece are different from those for an online one. What needs considering firstly is layout and this has been established by Parker (2003) who states that single columns are not appropriate for documents intended for onscreen reading. Nielsen (1999) points out that ‘print design is 2-dimensional, with much attention paid to layout’. On the contrary, web design is ‘1-dimensional and N-dimensional’ with up-and-down scrolling experience for the users.


This is due to the fact that the way audience read online and print material is very different.According to Kress & van leeuwen (2006),readers read from left to right or right to left considering their cultural background but according to Dr Jacob Nielsen's study, 79% of web users only scan a webpage instead of reading the entire content. This is because reading from the computer's monitor is 25% slower than reading from print and also staring too long at the monitors can increase eye strain.

Based on his study, he found that web readers are three times more likely to limit in-depth reading to short paragraphs than newspaper readers. This is because online content has no 'control' over what the audience has to read. Print content controls what the audience is reading and what they are going to read whereas online content allows the audience to be the active. Therefore, when designing for web, the content should not be flooded with information.

The Sydney morning Herald



Picture (a) The Sydney morning Herald newspaper
Source: www.smh.com.au, 2009



Picture (b) The Sydney Morning Herald online
Source: www.smh.com.au, 2009.

The two pictures above are from The Syndey Morning Herald. Picture (a) is the front page of the newspaper whereas picture (b) is the homepage of the online version of the paper.

When a reader reads the front page of the newspaper, they are "attacked" and are forced to pay attention to it. The cover pager has to be magnetic and A reader is first “attacked” for want of a better word by the cover or front page of the magazine. This cover page has to be eye-catching and captivating or in other words it has to be highly salient.

According to Kress & van Leeuwen (2006), salience is a feature or some features of an element that makes it entrancing or the ‘degree to which an element draws attention to itself’.

Thus, a document has to be designed in a way that it catches the reader's attention immediately. Picture elements has to be big and colorful. Walsh (2006) said that responses in an audience are usually achieved by the choices of color, size, angle and so on. She called this ‘visual grammar.'

However, when it comes to websites, a document designer cannot apply the same theory. Glaring and huge pictures cannot be at the center of attention as it will strain the reader's eyes. However, in web design, things like links can be provided to other sources or articles which cannot be done in print media. Thus, this creates more interactivity between readers online and the materials they consume.

References

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Nielsen, J 1997, Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web), Useit.com, viewed 29 April 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html>.

Nielsen, J, 1997. How Users Read on the Web. Viewed on 1 May 2008 at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>

Walsh, M 2006, The ‘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.