Differences Between Print Design and Web Design
It is an astounding experience to walk the halls at the
annual meeting of the Society
for News Design (SND): every wall is covered with
full-pages spreads from the best-designed newspapers around
the world. The book
reprinting the award-winning pages is a great design
resource, but the physical presence of the full-size newsprint
was utterly overwhelming.
Newspaper designers have a huge canvas to play with. Their
designs can be striking and yet intricate and pack much more
impact than a web page; especially because the entire
double-page spread is in-your-face in a fraction of a second.
Wham, here's the news.
The page in the figure is a great example of the
possibilities in print: a large, high-resolution map sets the
stage for a story about Chile and does double duty as an
information graphic for several data nuggets. More data is
visualized in smaller graphics around the page. And, of
course, there is room for a large amount of text that is set
in high-resolution type and nicely integrated with the
headlines and graphics in a pleasing over-all layout that
allows the eye to move from overview to details in a fraction
of a second.
Gold medal: Expansión (Spanish newspaper)
The above image does not do justice to the awards book
which is printed in super-high resolution on heavy-duty glossy
paper. In the book, it is possible to actually read the body
text on the page. For online, I had to squeeze the JPEG
quality down quite a bit in order to achieve the required
10-second download time for modem users. Another benefit of
print!
Dimensionality
Print design is 2-dimensional , with much attention paid to
layout. It is obviously possible for the reader to turn the
page, but substantial interplay between different spreads is
rare. Typically, each view is a design unit created for a
fixed size canvas - often a big canvas when designing
newspapers or posters.
In contrast, Web design is simultaneously 1-dimensional and
N-dimensional.
A web page is fundamentally a scrolling experience for the
user as opposed to a canvas experience. A small amount of
2-dimensional layout is possible, but not to the extent of
creating a pre-planned experience with a fixed spatial
relationship between elements. Users often begin scrolling
before all elements have been rendered, and different users
will scroll the page in different ways throughout their
reading experience.
Precise placement of elements on a web page goes against
the nature of HTML and can only be achieved to an
approximation for pages that are able to adjust to different
window sizes. Thus, 2-dimensional relationships between page
elements are less important than 1-dimensional relationships
(what's early on the page; what's later on the page).
Navigation
The N-dimensional aspect of web design follows from the
hypertext navigation that is the essence of the Web. Moving
around is what the Web is all about . When analyzing the
"look-and-feel" of a website, the feel completely dominates
the user experience. After all, doing is more memorable and
makes a stronger emotional impact than seeing .
In print, navigation mainly consists of page turning: an
ultra-simple user interface which is one of the printed
medium's great benefits. Because page turning is so limited,
it is often not even thought of as a design element. In
contrast, hypertext navigation is a major component of web
design, requiring decisions like
a) appearance of links
b) how to explain where users can go and where each link
will lead
c) visualization of the user's current location
d) information architecture
Response Time, Resolution, and Canvas
Size
Print is immensely superior to the Web in terms of speed,
type and image quality, and the size of the visible space.
These differences are not fundamental. We will eventually get:
a) bandwidth
fast enough to download a Web page as fast as one can turn
the page in a newspaper
b) screen resolution sharp enough to render type so crisply
that reading speed from screens reaches that of paper
c) huge screens the size of a newspaper spread - in fact, I
think that newspaper-sized screens are about the limit where
it may not make sense to make screens any larger
For the next ten years or so, the differences will remain
and will dictate restrictions on web design: less graphics ,
smaller graphics, shorter text (since it is unpleasant to read
online), less fancy typography (since you don't know what
fonts the user has installed), and less ambitious layouts.
Even when we get perfect hardware in ten years, it will
continue to be necessary to limit the word count since users
are more impatient online and are motivated
to move on . It will also be necessary to design web
information for small-canvas layouts since portable devices
will retain small screens even as we get huge screens in the
office.
I predict that new, non-window-based screen management
techniques will appear that will allow more interesting
utilization of the future huge displays. A bigger display
doesn't simply imply larger windows, even though some systems
currently promote the notion of "maximization" as the ultimate
user goal.
Multimedia, Interactivity, and
Overlays
Print can stun the reader with high-impact visualization,
but the online medium ultimately wins because of the user
engagement that is made possible by non-static design
elements. The Web can show moving images under user control
and it can allow the user to manipulate interactive widgets.
In the future, it will also be possible to use alpha-channel
blending and overlay multiple layers of information.
Basic web technology easily allows an interactive map of
Chile where the user can click on a city or region to go to a
specialized page with more in-depth information. An even
greater amount of engagement follows from a more closely
integrated interactive visualization where pointing to objects
results in explanations or expansions in context, possibly
using pop-ups, overlays, or voice-over. Such highly
interactive information graphics require the use of
non-standard technology and are therefore not currently
recommended on mainstream web pages, but they can be used in
specialized services and will hopefully become a common part
of the Web's future.
Respect (no, Relish ) the Differences
Anything that is a great print design is likely to be a
lousy web design. There are so many differences between the
two media that it is necessary to take different design
approaches to utilize the strengths of each medium and
minimize its weaknesses.
a) Print design is based on letting the eyes walk over the
information, selectively looking at information objects and
using spatial juxtaposition to make page elements enhance and
explain each other.
b) Web design functions by letting the hands move the
information (by scrolling or clicking); information
relationships are expressed temporally as part of an
interaction and user movement.
With better hardware, differences in terms of appearance
and layout may diminish. At the same time, more powerful
software and a better understanding of interactive information
objects will increase the differences in terms of interaction
and user control. Current web designs are insufficiently
interactive and have extremely poor use of multimedia. It is
rare to see a web animation that has any goal besides annoying
the user.
Print design is highly refined, as evidenced by glancing
through the recent book of award-winning designs. Web design
is impoverished because too many sites strive for the wrong
standards of excellence that made sense in the print world but
do not make sufficient advances in interactivity.
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