Too Much Print...Not Enough Web?

This past Wednesday at the Windup Space, Guy Arceneaux and I gave presentations for Aquent’s first roundtable discussion event. The evening was focused on a dilemma I think many print designers are finding. The print market is over saturated with designers, and the web market is in need for more designers. Based in print design, I have been transitioning more into web because of a need for my job and my own personal curiosity. On Wednesday, I spoke about what I have learned during this time of transition.

My first job was with CNN Headline News as a broadcast designer. I learned a lot about creating graphics for on-screen use, but I also realized I missed print design. When I moved to Japan, I decided I wanted to get back into print. I had also considered venturing into web, but that whole world seemed far too focused on coding. I often found myself frustrated that I couldn’t implement everything I wanted into my designs. So if I had a t-shirt, it would have said this:

But, I have too say, web is here to stay. This next image shows Netcraft’s most recent survey illustrating the increase of hostnames. There was an increase of over 6 million sites between February and March this year. To put that in perspective, only 308,000 babies are born in the US each month.

Why is everyone wanting a website?

1. It’s easier to have a website now. People can get free blogs or purchase hosting packages that include free website building software. I have friends with no web experience writing blogs documenting their babies’ lives and websites for their wedding planning.
2. It’s green. Perhaps that isn’t the primary reason companies start a website, but it is a new way they are using it. There was a time graphic designers were creating beautiful annual reports with spot colors, varnishes and die cuts. These reports were then mailed out to people all over the world. Now it has become taboo for a company to print an annual report, so instead, they create online versions.
3. A site validates you. Having a site creates a professional appearance. It has become unusual for a company to not have a website. When they don’t, people question whether they are a trustworthy company.
4. It makes you accessible. Communication has changed for companies. They are more virtual now. It is common to receive a business card without a snail mail address and only a web address. Companies not only want a website, they want a blog, be on Facebook and have a Twitter account.

The web is still maturing
Print went through this process too. Back in the day, graphic designers were cutting and pasting with real scissors and glue, not the Apple + C and Apple + V keys, and computers could barely draw a circle. We evolved to an established set of standard software. Web is still going through this process of growth. The reason why web is taking longer is because I don’t think we fully understand what the end product is yet. For print, we had had a clear definition of a designer’s needs and the end products they were creating. But with web, the end product is not defined, so it is difficult to create software when we still don’t know what it will be making.

It’s also important to understand how we got here.

Tim Berners-Lee just wanted to make some academic papers available to labs around the world. He didn’t know the Internet was going to turn into the wild thing it is today.

This is how a site was built in the 1990s. There was an index page in HTML, and it linked to other HTML pages. These pages also pulled images from an images folder. This works, but it has some problems.

1. There is no interactivity. The user visits the site. They read what they want, and then they move on to the next site.
2. It’s painful to make any global changes. Your client wants the navigation to be changed from red to blue and the footer needs to be updated. You have to open all the HTML pages to make those changes in every file. Not a big deal for a small site. It is a very big deal when your site is hundreds and hundreds of pages. Your time could certainly be better spent elsewhere. Not to mention the chance of missing one or accidentally removing some important code is an additional risk.
3. You need a webmaster to manage the site. Your client doesn’t know how to speak HTML, so they have to hire someone to keep their site updated.

Then Hakon Wium-Lie created CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS separates the design portions of code out from the HTML pages. The HTML pages receive all the design instructions from a stylesheet file. Now HTML tables can go back to being used only for tabular data and not for trying to position logos, navigation and body copy! Also, when your client wants their navigation to be changed from red to blue, you can just open the stylesheet file and change it once rather than a hundred times. However, there are still the other problems we had before: viewing is one-sided, it is still difficult to change content on a global scale and we still need a webmaster.

Ok. This was a bit of a hic-up in the world of web design and development, so some time was needed to recover.

Web 2.0 refers to the perceived second generation of web design and development. This refers to websites offering better communication, information sharing and collaboration on the web. Sites are doing more than just retrieving information for a user to read. Users can now participate and add content, contributing to the growth of websites. These are sites like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Yahoo groups, elearning programs, etc.

During this time, sites became driven by databases and used lots of different types of coding methods. The addition of Includes was great because it finally solved the problem of changing content globally. Now to update the footer information, you only have to open one file, and the information is updated globally across the site, similar to CSS. But, as you guessed, we still have the problem of requiring a webmaster, and we’ve also added a new problem into the mix. With all these different coding methods being used and information being housed in different places, it’s difficult to remember where everything is living in the site.

Now many sites are being built using a CMS (content management system). CMS started in 1996, but it was expensive and not so user-friendly. After the collapse of the dot-coms, CMS started to evolve into cheaper simpler systems, many of which are opensource. CMS holds all the information and the site’s functions in one database. Developers can build add-ons and new features. Designers can edit CSS to skin the site, and the client can update the site themselves. This is a big improvement. No longer do we need a webmaster role. Since clients are participatory in the creation and maintenance of the site, they are starting to understand the difference in the roles of a web developer and web designer.

Print vs Web
When I first started working for Monotype (now Six Red Marbles), we were making a lot of printed pieces like these. Lots of textbooks, student editions, teacher editions, ancillaries and covers.

But then Monotype and Six Red Marbles merged and so my department is now also responsible for designing interactive work like student tools, teacher tools and websites.

So it has been important for me to recognize the differences and similarities between print and web design.

Whether you are designing for a printed piece or a website, the process is really the same. You receive manuscript or wireframes. You then do your research. You design the work, and then it is passed on to production or a developer to finish it up.

Print and Web are mediums.
Think of oil paint for a minute. It is thick, dries slowly and you would usually use a canvas. Now think of watercolor. It is fast, fluid and works well on watercolor paper. When an artist wants to change mediums, they have to learn the characteristics of the new medium. I think we have to do the same for print and web.

When I was at DrupalCon in DC this past March, David Weinberger, a keynote speaker said some terrible words. He said, “Paper is a prison”! How dare he say that, right? Well, I do understand what he means. For a printed piece, the content is final; it is static. You are implementing a narrative. There is usually a beginning, middle and end to it. You are in control of your variables. You know you shouldn’t put text right up on the edge of the page because the printer is going to lop it off when cropping the press sheets. Also, your audience is more likely to read a printed piece.

In an interactive piece, the content is constantly in flux. Heck, now the audience can add content! There is no real beginning, middle or end because the user is deciding where they enter a site, where they go within it and how they exit it. You are not in control of the machine accessing the site, so there are different operating systems, web browsers, fonts, screen colors and resolutions to consider. And to top it off, the user is scanning, so they are receiving information in fragments.

Print and Web require the same skills.
Print and web design both require you to understand the target audience, typography, color theory, branding, composition, hierarchy, grid structure and even navigation. In a book there is a table of contents, page numbers and an index. In Web there are buttons and site navigation. Are these forms of navigation really that different? These skills are used differently between print and web, but they are still both required to establish good design.

Print and Web require similar tools.
A print designer needs a vector program, a raster program and a layout program. With that they are pretty happy. A web designer needs a vector program and a raster program. They need layout skills, but they don’t really need a layout program because usually the layout is designed in the imaging program and then built with coding. It does help to understand XHTML, CSS and a CMS system too, but if the designer maintains good communication with the developer, then that isn’t really necessary.

Now you might find yourself asking if you should specialize in print or web. Well, you can even specialize within those fields. You can choose to just focus in identity design, publications, sustainable design, package design, etc. Or if you wanted, you could specialize in a Web specialty. That is one of the great things about graphic design, there are so many different fields and industries that have a need for it.

There are several successful designers that have chosen not to specialize.

Saul Bass was very diverse. He designed lots of well-known logos, movie posters and even film titles.

Stephan Sagmeister has designed for practically everything. I think the one consistent thing in his work is his hand-typography. He has even gotten to the point of using graphic design as a medium for work showcased in galleries.

Sylvia Harris appropriately calls herself an Information Design Strategist. She has established identities for the US Census and the ACLU, but then she’s also creating wayfinding systems for hospitals and designing gallery spaces. She even was involved in the planning and redesign of the NYC taxi system.

There are also companies like Pentagram that design for a wide range of things.

And Paula Scher, a partner at Pentagram is known for her typographically driven posters, branding the New York City Ballet and most recently Truvia. She also creates interesting paintings of maps using typography and has explored using typography with architecture.

But then there are many successful designers that choose to specialize.

David Airey has made it a point to only focus on identity design.

Neville Brody is mostly known for his cover designs and typefaces.

House Industries is a company that specializes in typeface design.

Jan Bons was a great poster designer.

Shepard Fairey loves creating poster designs.

So for me, web design used to be too much coding, too many languages. Now the web is interesting to me again. I no longer need to know every coding system in the world, and with the use of a CMS, I can implement lots of functionality into a site without a developer. I think it is important to remember we are designers. Our responsibility is to help our clients communicate visually. The challenge between print and web is recognizing the differences between the mediums and how the audience interacts with it. I still love the tactile quality of paper, but I am now enjoying the fluidity of web. So I am happy to say…

Further Reading

• Guy Arceneaux poses the question to AIGA LinkedIn.
• Guy also posted his presentation on his blog.
• If you are in the Baltimore area, start going to Refresh Bmore meetings and make friends with web designers and developers.
• Leslie Jensen-Inman interviewed leaders of web design and development to hear their perspective regarding web education.
• Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krugg
• Designing for the Web Today by Chris Butler
• 8 Simple Ways to Improve Typography in Your Designs (for Web) by Antonio Carusone
• A List Apart
• CSS Zen Garden
• CSS: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland
• Using Drupal by Jeff Robbins, Angela Byron, Addison Berry, Jeff Eaton, Nate Haug, James Walker (Drupal is just one of many CMS’s available, and no preference has been established yet in the Web industry.)
• There are lots of tutorials on the web, but be careful to make sure the information is not too dated.