ISSUES IN DESIGN: PRINT VS ONLINE

Well over a decade into online distribution, readers and the publishing industry alike continue to debate the wisdom of these two politics. It seems there are many different issues when designing for print as opposed to designing online.

With reference to Roger Parker (2003), when designing for web distribution there are certain elements which need to be kept in mind. Today, more and more documents are intended for web site distribution.

Some of these documents will only ever be read on the screen and never be printed. As hardware and software costs continue to drop, and new technologies such as computing and wireless devices gain popularity, more and more documents can never be "printed" in the traditional sense.

The continued proliferation of documents intended for web documents intended for website distribution brings up several readability issues.

According to Roger Parker (2003), onscreen reading is far more difficult than reading a printed document because of the different ways a readers' eyes encounter a message. Onscreen reading involves 'projected light'. Readers are, in effect, staring into the lens of a slide projector which increases eye fatigue.

On the other hand, reading a printed document involved 'reflected light'. The letters stand out agaisnt their background because the black letters and white background absorb different amounts of light. As a result, the contrast range is not as prevalent, so there is less chance of eye fatigue.

Another difference in issues between print and onscreen reading, according to Roger Parker (2003), involves the limited amount of text visible at a time on screen. When reading a printed document, readers can see the entire page-typlically a vertical rectangle. Without physical activity-scrolling through the page or moving their head. Onscreen reading, however, typically reveals only a horizontal rectangular view of part of a page. This makes it harder for visitors to get a "big picture" view of what they're reading.

Roger Parker (2003) suggest that when designing for web distribution, you should avoid multicolumn layouts, reduce line length, adjust line spacing, indicate new paragraphs, use subheads and sidebars to long documents into manageable, bitesized chunks, use white space to subdivide and organise a document, use typographic contrast, add text hyperlinks, avoid thin, ornate typefaces, consider ture type fonts, use colour with restraint, keep readers informed by using headers and footers, keep designs as simple as posible and avoid complicated side effects, and finally, design your document so that the reader will not have to constantly scroll to read important information. By following these suggestions by Parker, it will enable you to create publications that canbe easily read onscreen as threy can be read off-screen.

Reference: Parker, R. 2003. 'Looking Good in Print', Designing Documents for Wed Distribution. Chapter 14, 5th Edition,  pp. 265-293, Scottsdale, Ariz: Paraglyph Press