Print Design Versus Web Design

For centuries after the creation of the printing press, the way we received information was dominated by the printed media. We became used to seeing better and bigger visuals - first in black and white, then in glossy color. We became used to turning pages to finish stories and letting our eyes casually roam over a landscape of words at our convenience.

Although the development of the radio and television did change some things, nothing has had the same impact as the Internet when it comes to changing the way we design information to be accessible to readers.

In fact, there's one golden rule: what looks good in print rarely looks good on the web. And there's a good reason for that.

Designing for print and for the web are very different things. For example, in printed media - like a newspaper or magazine - the reader's experience is guided by the publisher. If the publisher wants to continue a story on page ten, then the reader is directed to go to page 10. Plus, most Western readers are going to browsing through the publication in one direction so publishers can easily determine the best placement of stories, ads, and images to maximize the readers experience.

With the web, designing is not so straight forward. Web publishers rely heavily on scrolling instead of page turning in most cases. Plus, site visitors can jump around those pages at random. There is no specific way to look at the pages of a web site. You go to what looks interesting. Take a quick look and then move on. For these reasons, web designers must focus on how to make the pages attention-getting so people who land on those pages won't just take off again.

These differences affect the way both printed and web-based media are developed. However, that doesn't mean there aren't some similarities.

We established that there is clearly a difference between designing things for the printed media and for the Internet. The whole idea of navigation, for example, just doesn't come into the picture with a newspaper but it's everything on a web site.

Despite those differences, print and web design do share some similarities. The most obvious example are the use of attention-getting headlines. The top Internet marketers in the business will tell you that without an amazing grabber at the top of a page, you're not likely to keep many of your site visitors. Ask any newspaper person what makes or breaks a story's readership and they'll tell you it's the headline.

Writing and designing headlines is an art form. It requires a knowledge of what your readers want. It means knowing what is going to stand out on the page. Designers for both mediums know this fact.

Another similarity is that readers have to be motivated to keep moving through the medium. Let's say you're reading a story in a magazine and come to the end of a page where it tells you to go further in the magazine to finish reading. Are you going to? Not automatically you won't. First, the story has to be well-written and interesting. You're not going to waste your energy to finish a bad story, right? Plus, the story has to end at a point where you feel compelled to read more - in the days of serials they called these points cliffhangers.

The same is true for material on the web. Whether you want someone to scroll down or move to a different page, you must keep them a good reason to do so. If you don't, then they'll stop in their tracks or - worse - go to a different web site.