Which Design? Online or Print?

In this era of digital and design, the development of the web has changed the way how people seek their information. Previously, when there was only print design, people focused more on hard copies to get their information. Today, people are able to obtain their information from the web as an alternative from print. The design for a web and the design for print are two totally different issues. For designers, they should realize that both of these designs are different in their own way as viewers read differently when they read from the web and from print copy. What are the differences between online and print?

For print designs, there are several ways how it could be designed. According to Kress & van Leeuwen (2006), the readers read according to their cultural background. For example, some languages such as English is read from left to right, and other are read from right to left. Below is an example of a Star Newspaper hard copy.

(Source: Google.com)

As for web designs, the reader’s method of reading is different from reading print documents. According to Nielsen (1997), web designs should not be overwhelmed by information because the reader’s only rarely read word by word. He also stated that reading online is slower compared to reading from print. Walsh (2006) also stated that the audience for web designs depends on the color, size, angle which draws the audience’s attention. This is to make sure the audience does not get bored while viewing the page. Below is an example of the Star Newspaper online website.

(Source: The Star Online)

Although print and online designs are different, it would still survive as both of them have its pros and cons and different people have different interest and likings.


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 12 November 2009, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.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.