In a world which relied heavyly on techonology, more and more documents are read on screen rather than on print. Although the shift is imminent, print still has its fair share of audience.
Designing for print is different from online as it has space limitation, articles are in competition with other articles for attention and no changes once its printed. An example of print is newspaper, the layout system involved three signifying systems; Information value, Salience and Framing.
Information value
It is important to understand which information is of vaule where it attracts attention from the audience. In a newspaper layout, different information value will get a different zone or visual space.
Salience
Layout to get reader's attention varies in degree, placement of information on foreground or background, sizes, contrast in tonal value or colour all makes a great different.
Framing
Framelines or whitespace between informations can connect or disconnect the information instantly.
Designing for online is a different ball game altogether. Information in this aspect is more define as they focus more on one specific information. You can have instant modification to the pages and you can modify it as often as you want. It is more interactive as video clips can be added to add movement in the page.
Layout for online is not as tedious as print, it is not recommneded to claster all the informations together. In fact, it is adviceable to spread out the information out evenly and have alot of whitespace so that it is easier for readers to read.
One crucial point to note for online designing is the use of colours, different screen give a different colour reading, as such, it is adviceable to choose the colours carefully.
Parker, C 2003, Looking good in print, Designing documents for web distribution, 5th edition, Paraglyph Press, Scottsdale Ariz.
Kress, Gunther and van Leeuwen, Theo 1998, Approaches to media discourse, Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout, Blackwell, Oxford.
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