Print media versus Online Media

Ever since the dawn of the internet, document designers have been struggling to adept to this new media.

After all, designing something which forces the reader to go page by page is rather different from designing something where the readers have the ability to just skip all those in front and jump straight to the middle or back. In other words, the audience has just gain something new, free will. An article at BBC states that websites averagely gets an attention span of 60seconds, considering the millions of website available today, this could range from 0.1 sec to 30 minutes or more. Thus it is the job of a document designer to catch and hold the attention of their readers

However, there are somethings that did not change as document designers realize as they move into the digital era. As for one, readers still not only read the text, buy they read the actions, noises, musics and other background information. Other design principles apply to such as, balance, propotion, sequence and consistency (Reep 1996).

Moreover, graphic images has help more then ever in today's internet age. Graphics provide a compilation of information which will catch the readers attention much better then mere words.

Furthermore, online media has one very important element which print medium lacks. That is the ability for the user to engage more interactively with all kinds of multimedia tools available to the designer.

For example would the print version and online version of the Malaysia's Star paper. Their format are totally different from what each other. For the online version click here.

Thus, there are both pro's and con's to online and print media. It is all up to the document designer to decide how to best utilize them.

Source
Reep, D 2006, Technical writing: principles, strategies and reading, Allyn and Bacon 3rd edition Ch. 4, pp.90-128.

Nielsen, J 1999, Differences Between Print Design and Web Design, viewed May 01 2008, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html